Albums

Maisy Owen’s debut Dark On A Sunny Day is a singer-songwriter album that, for a first attempt, shows remarkable maturity and a kind of timelessness in her style. Even when stripped down to the bare bones of voice and guitar, it still has enough detail to hold its spell. Maisy Owen sounds like she has a fascinating journey ahead.

White Fence’s Orange, out now via Drag City, is Tim Presley’s first album in seven years — and it sounds freer and more expansive than ever. With Ty Segall again in the producer’s chair, these songs are built for electricity, celebrating melody whilst unafraid to show hurt, fear, and despair. There is an audible joy in the playing.

Yorkshire-based folksinger and guitarist Chris Brain’s fourth album, Red Sun Rising, replaces the wide optimism of last year’s ‘New Light’ with a sense of knowing, yet still manages to focus on the brightness of life and the idea of new beginnings. Adept fingerpicking, considered guest musicians, a philosophical focus on finding beauty in the now — Chris just keeps getting better.

Of all the artists that emerged from the freak folk/New Weird America boom of the early noughties, Josephine Foster is one of the most enduring, and certainly one of the most interesting. On her new album Adormidera, she and Víctor Herrero have created, through a kind of alchemy, an artefact that seems to grow more beautiful with every listen.

Blood Sucking Maniacs, the self-titled debut from Terry Allen’s multigenerational family band, is out now on Paradise of Bachelors. Spanning five generations and 121 years across twenty-two tracks, it folds in Jo Harvey Allen, sons, grandsons, Panhandle Mystery Band stalwarts and a barrelhouse-piano-playing matriarch captured on seventies cassette. Free, wild, tender, and gloriously unruly — Americana cross-pollinated across the ages.

On Emily Portman’s fourth solo album, she weaves a tapestry of complex lyrical themes and intricate musical arrangements. Of all the singers and songwriters in British folk music, few have the ability to encapsulate what it means to be human in the way that Portman does. “Dominion of Spells” is a real and vital piece of work, something to be cherished.

Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane, Mark Nelson’s latest solo album as Pan•American, plays out like the sensation of crossing cities in a little aeroplane — each track feels like its own journey to a nameless destination, but looking out the window, there is a sense of safety, comfort, and calm. A mesmerising body of work ruminating deep from within.

On Old Spot (II), fiddle player Rowan Piggott and banjoist Joe Danks continue exploring American Old-time traditions with a discernible difference in the sound — a suggestion of minimalism around some songs, and a precise nature to the playing. The duo’s second album is a significant leap forward — a very accomplished set from two players who clearly love their craft.

Baltimore, the second album from North Carolina duo Tacoma Park, finds John Harrison and Ben Felton in more focused and confident form. Formed from lengthy remote sessions and edited with considerable discipline, the album balances acoustic Americana with electronic strangeness — simple melodies blending seamlessly with electronica and dance beats across forty cohesive, deeply enjoyable minutes.

Frog have always been brilliant at exposing the emptiness and hollowness at the heart of things, and filling it up, at least temporarily, with their own brand of heartfelt Americana. Eight albums in, and that continues to be the case. Frog For Sale, with its Beatle-baiting title and condensed, pining, piano-oriented sound, is a welcome hit of literate indie wistfulness from one of America’s most consistently impressive bands.

Kris Drever’s “Doing This For Love” is an artfully crafted meditation on the unglamorous reality of 4am alarm clocks and quiet sacrifices. Infused with northern grit, it stands as a powerful tribute to the working lives it depicts. These songs are born of struggle but elevated by love, each with the potential to secure a lasting place in the folk canon.

“…an album that flits so easily between past and present, whose songs encompass fluttering beauty and quietly looming presences.” The Little Winters is an album worthy of the clàrsach, with all its historical and cultural importance, and Anna McLuckie, with her clear voice, poetic songwriting and precise, fluid playing, has announced herself as one of British folk music’s most formidable talents.