This week’s Monday Morning Brew Playlist features some older favourites as well as new tunes, including:
Chris Brain and Natalie Wildgoose’s Big Hill, is the second single from Brain’s forthcoming album Red Sun Rising, out May 1st via Big Sun Records. The track carries a characteristically unassuming backstory: Brain describes it as a song inspired by a long-held longing to climb one of the hills in the Yorkshire Dales, a view he’d admired through the window on countless journeys. When he finally made the ascent, a steady breeze seemed to carry him up the slope, and a cool river below offered relief after the descent.
Josienne Clarke has released Katie Cruel, a reimagining of the traditional folk song long associated with themes of exile, rejection and endurance. The song has passed through centuries of oral tradition, with notable versions by Karen Dalton, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Agnes Obel and Lankum. Clarke’s version extends the song with two newly written verses. “I needed to have a point of personal connection,” she says, “to be able to imagine the song in my own voice and canon.” Her additions align the song’s estrangement with the realities of an uncompromising artistic life. Built around an electric guitar figure and recorders, the arrangement is spartan and resolute.
Aldous Harding will release her fifth studio album, Train on the Island, on 8th May 2026. Check out lead single One Stop. The ten-track album was co-produced by long-time collaborator John Parish (PJ Harvey, Dry Cleaning) at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, with an ensemble cast including pedal steel player Joe Harvey-Whyte, harpist Mali Llywelyn, synth artist Thomas Poli, drummer Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear) and Huw Evans (H. Hawkline).
Available on Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, and YouTube, listen links are available via our Substack Newsletter – includes weekly playlists to paid supporters: