Here are ten pieces that have recently caught my attention.
The Thorn – Fountain
You will probably remember The Thorn as Large Plants, featuring Jack Sharp (Wolf People), Paul Milne (Hanging Stars, Green Seagull), Itamar Rubinger (Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats), Naomi Randall. They appear to have adopted the name of their 2023 Ghost Box album that we reviewed here.
Fountain is their first release as The Thorn, described as “a break-driven acoustic incantation. This is hauntological British psych-folk in its purest form.”
Joseph Shabason and Thom Gill – Mississippi River Styx
This is a score for the indie doc Mississippi River Styx, about an enigmatic drifter suffering from terminal cancer who lives out his dream of floating down the Mississippi River on a ramshackle houseboat, until the truthfulness of his story is questioned, leaving the viewer suspended between truth, myth, and mortality.
We recently wrote about Joseph Shabason after Japanese lo-fi experimentalists Tenniscoats teamed up with Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich for the wonderful ‘Wao’, an outwardly unassuming album that is as wise, beautiful, and unexpected as anything currently happening in the furthest-flung outposts of music. Here, alongside Thom Gill and aided by several guest musicians, their score perfectly mirrors the film’s ambiguity. Using sparse instrumentation—guitar, reeds, percussion, and voice—the music drifts like the river’s current, oscillating between hushed intimacy and uneasy spaciousness.
Listen to Fire on the Ridge, featuring the resonant vocals of Andre Ethier, who appears on five of the album’s tracks.
Andy McMillan (co-director):
We wanted to bring a years-long collaboration full circle—returning to our earliest influence, Flannery O’Connor’s The River. The video is a loose, absurd adaptation of that dynamite little story.
Joseph Shabason on the soundtrack:
We decided to approach this soundtrack release in a somewhat unconventional way. Thom and I composed the music for the film and then sent it to Andre to see what he thought about it. Interestingly, he ended up writing lyrics to the cues based on his imagination of what the main character in the documentary might be experiencing—despite not having seen the film and knowing nothing about its story. Conceptually, this resonated deeply with me; it felt much cooler and more surreal than simply trying to mirror the plot through lyrics.
Later, Tim and Andy, the creators of the documentary, made a music video inspired by Andre’s reinterpretation, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with what Andre is singing about.
The whole project feels like one enormous, evolving riff—constantly shifting and morphing through different creative perspectives. To me, it feels far more alive than just releasing the original songs from the film.
Andre Ethier on “Fire on the Ridge”:
I didn’t even try to imagine what the “story” of the documentary was. I just kept the river and America in mind.
What came out was sort of a sketch of a post “America” America. A family navigating a collapsed America. It’s sung through a parent’s perspective and sung to a child, so the danger is hidden. I was imagining the poster for Vacation, with Chevy Chase.
Anyway, that’s what it sounds like to me looking back at it.
Toby Hay – Pentwyn EP
Back in June, Rhayader-based instrumentalist Toby Hay treated us to New Music for the 6 String Guitar, an album inspired by his then-new Fylde Ariel guitar, a parlour made of similar timbers to his twelve-string and inlaid with a curlew bird. Just as the inspiration of nature shaped that album, so too is this latest four-track offering, inspired by Pentwyn Farm in Wales:
“Wilder Pentwyn Farm has a 30 vision to bring nature back in full, making space for local food production, holding back water and providing opportunities for income generation”
Walter Hus – Volume 1 / performed by Zenne Quartet
This album is the fruit of a deep collaboration between Belgian composer/pianist Walter Hus (also co-founder, pianist, and composer of the group Maximalist!) and the Zenne Quartet. Released on the excellent Belgian record label Sub Rosa, founded in the late 1980s by Guy-Marc Hinant and Frédéric Walheer, the label encompasses a broad definition of sound, ranging from spoken word and traditional folk music to noise and Musique concrète.
Hus is hailed as one of today’s most original composers, known for an oeuvre that masterfully applies complex classical techniques while integrating elements from contemporary subcultures.
His ten string quartets form the backbone of his creative work, and the Brussels-based Zenne Quartet has dedicated itself to recording his complete works for quartet.
Teppana Jänis & Arja Kastinen – Teppana Jänis
Another label that’s also quite adventurous is London’s Death Is Not The End. The album ‘Teppana Jänis’ by Teppana Jänis & Arja Kastinen is a remarkable fusion of past and present Karelian folk tradition. It features the original 1916–1917 wax cylinder recordings of the blind master kantele player, Teppana Jänis (1850–1919), from Suistamo. These raw, historical recordings, collected by researcher Armas Otto Väisänen, are intertwined with new interpretations by kantele player Arja Kastinen and the late folk musician Taito Hoffrén. Kastinen’s playing reinterprets Jänis’s melodies, using Väisänen’s transcriptions for additional nuance. The LP serves as a poignant tribute, bringing the nearly lost sound of early 20th-century Border Karelian kantele music back to life.
The Owl Service – The Flypaper EP
Steven Collins has just announced the release of another Owl Service EP. The four tracks also feature Dorothy Chappell, Rebecca Leivers on vocals and Alison O’Donnell on backing vocals. Their full band version of Girl of Constant Sorrow., is worth the price alone:
Why Horses? – Yeah, Hi?
Recorded in various university spaces, bedrooms and studios across the UK – from Portsmouth, Westminster to Swansea – , Yeah, Hi? stitches together fragments of chaos into something sharp, something strange….
Each track reveals a different corner of the band’s world. ‘Mon Monde’ opens with French spoken word – its spaghetti-western guitar and surreal cowboy imagery cut through with a wry humour. ‘Far Away So Close’, the band’s debut single, is wired and vulnerable, a love song that thrums with urgency. ‘What I’m Into’ mixes sincerity with playful in-jokes, a fan favourite the band have carried for years. ‘Conversation’ wrestles with the awkwardness of small talk and the weight of stammering, layering its discomfort into something strangely beautiful. And ‘I’ve Got a Fever’ burns at the core of the record: samba-inspired percussion and pulsing bassline driving a fever-dream memory into a taut 3 minutes 30 of pure release.
Forming at university by long-time collaborators Gabriel Lester (Guitar/Vocals), Les Davies (Bass), and Hadi Checri (Percussion) – before adding William Dadswell (Violin) and Dilibe Aneke (Guitar) to complete the line-up – what started as a series of primitive late night jams and spontaneous experiments steadily blossomed and grew into something stranger and more cinematic than any of them could have imagined…
Unfurling a music of unease, tension and love, they are the latest act to creep and crawl out of an ever-blossoming Cardiff grassroots scene. Signing to newly formed label BWGiBWGAN (pronounced ‘boogie-boogan’ – Welsh for ‘Ghost Disco’) – the band are among a new generation of Welsh musicians, rubbing shoulders with the likes of contemporaries MORN and Casual Smart.
Great Lake Swimmers – Caught Light
Great Lake Swimmers’ ninth full-length album, Caught Light, arrives as an invigorating “reset” for the long-running project. Billed as their most immediate record, the collection was born from a desire for warmth, simplicity, and a commitment to instinct, echoing the spirit of early ’70s folk artists like John Martyn and Dory Previn. This urgency and presence define the album’s sound, which was tracked live over a quick three days in a forest studio in Ontario’s Ganaraska region.
The band, led by Tony Dekker, consciously relinquished control, handing production duties to former bassist Darcy Yates (Bahamas). Yates curated a stellar line-up, including legendary Canadian drummer Gary Craig and engineer Jim Bowskill—who also became a “secret weapon,” adding rich textures on pedal steel, mandolin, and fiddle. This collaborative, effortless approach—”No endless revisions, no long edits”—allowed the songs to be captured quickly and honestly, reflecting the luminous and fleeting quality of the album’s title metaphor.
The collection blends comfort with new explorations. The opening track, “One More Dance Around The Sun,” is a sun-soaked ode to returning home, inspired by Dekker’s move back to his Niagara roots and the rediscovery of meaning in familiar faces and roads. The uplifting country shuffle of “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong” celebrates the kind of friend who simply listens and understands. While much of the record feels like a return to acoustic warmth, tracks like “Running Out Of Time” bring a political edge, urging action and love over apathy and greed. Caught Light is a deep, collaborative collection that trades overthinking for intuition, resulting in a set of songs that feel both like a comforting embrace and a fresh, welcome turning point.
Lando Manning – Fragments
Lando’s Fragments EP is a haunting, sincere “love letter to British Folk, but if it was written by Mary Shelley.” Taking inspiration from pioneers like Shirley Collins and Joan Baez, and recorded in South London, the EP features guest musicians like Dina Wilcock and William Kitcatt. Lando’s music offers wistful comfort, like a whisper and an echo. His ethereal folk, including a ghostly, electric take on Bunyan’s ‘Rose Hip November’, is a compelling listen.
Norma Dream – Mercy Drops
Available via the excellent UK-based label Worried Songs, Mercy Drops is the debut studio offering from Norma Dream, a six-piece dream folk band from Northampton, Massachusetts. The band, built upon the masterful banjo playing and poetic songwriting of Norma Jean Haynes, grounds its unique sound in a deep understanding of American roots traditions.
Inspired by the Sacred Harp hymn “Africa,” the album explores the idea of “mercy drops”—those small moments of grace that sustain us through dry spells. Composed following a profound love story in the mountains of Corsica, the music uses American folk vernacular to meditate on love’s presence and absence. The full six-piece ensemble—including percussion, acoustic guitar, fiddle, cello, and keys—creates a cohesive universe to lose yourself in.