Honest, in-depth album reviews by KLOF Mag – championing and curating intelligent, uncompromising voices in contemporary and experimental music since 2004.
Albums
by Danny Neill
Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders’ “Liquid Donnon” is a record that gives every track the space and time it needs to reach its destination. It draws together dusty folk, cosmic jazz, deep psych, and free improvisation. For those who follow Alexander, the concert tapers included, this is essential.
D.C Cross’s “Open Guitar (Volume Two)” documents thirteen acoustic guitar improvisations across 3.5 hours, using locations across Australia — and their ambient sounds — to add subtle texture. The constant rush of water on Rainforest Maleny, the bird calls that punctuate This Sound at Dusk (Hobbit Tree): these details allow Cross to ease up and let the natural world share the space. Complex, experienced playing; take some time and explore.
On “Just A Day”, The Hanging Stars strip their sound back to its essence with the help of producer Gerard Love. Richard Olson continues to demonstrate his facility for tapping into the most memorable tunes while bringing to bear the wisdom and empathy that only life experience brings. The album proves the opposite of its title — they’re in it for the long haul.
by Danny Neill
MorganEve Swain’s “Babylon”, the second album from The Huntress and Holder of Hands, is a vivid, heavily weighted folk-rock album that traces how grief changes shape over time. Over a decade on from losing her husband Dave Lamb, Swain channels that long private reckoning into something communal and forward-looking — moving and epic, with a rough-hewn buoyancy that ultimately nudges toward light.
“Stash,” the second album from BCMC — the Chicago guitar-and-keys duo of Bill MacKay and Cooper Crain — pulls a range of styles from their minimalist set-up. More excitable than 2023’s “Foreign Smokes,” the musicians are happy to explore dynamically within a song. This is a generous, joyous album, brimming with life, energy and a real love of music.
by Thomas Blake
Frankie Archer’s debut album “The Dance of Death” combines traditional balladry with very contemporary-sounding electronica, resulting in a sound unlike anyone else. Built around the ideas of death and mortality, it is anything but one-dimensionally depressing. Archer is a one-of-a-kind talent with a huge career ahead of her.
by Danny Neill
On “These Are The Days That Turn Into Years”, their seventh studio album, Pharis & Jason Romero, following their 2022 release, channel four years of living, touring, parenting and banjo-building into their most open-hearted set yet. Tracked in their riverside Horsefly barn, it feels lived-in and luminous — a pure rootsy joyride that will send you straight back to the opening track.
“Sam Carter Sings Nic Jones,” recorded live at Celtic Connections, is a faithful, generous tribute to one of the UK’s finest folk musicians. Carter knows these songs inside out, and he delivers them with a real passion, as well as the care they deserve. It’s a record that hands the tradition on, proof that the cycle of folk music and storytelling is in good health.
MMM (Gayle Brogan, Elizabeth Still, Nick Jonah Davis) provide a fascinating, deep listening experience on “Lunistice Alignments”. The record covers a lot of sonic ground, each of the six tracks occupying a very different space and mood. Somehow sounding ancient and contemporary, light and dense: MMM ask for close attention and repay it in full.
by Thomas Blake
Shabason & Krgovich’s “Four Days in June” is an album of subtle, often delicate layers, borrowing from country, sophisticated AOR, laid-back jazz and chamber-pop. This is music that settles on you gently, sometimes like a fine rain or sometimes like dust — songs that patiently take stock as their creators slip into middle age. Deceptively light, wholly profound art.
by Alex Neilson
Emmett Kelly, Stephen Malkmus, Matt Sweeney and Jim White have all done time in supergroups before. Could they handle it on a cold Tuesday night on a Bluetooth stereo in Glasgow? Alex Neilson gives an emphatic and unequivocal yes. Released in late 2024, “The Hard Quartet” carries all the messy, confounding joy of Dirty Three and Pavement, and makes you remember what you love about music.
New Mexico banjoist Johnny Bell builds “Mountain States” around the character of the five-string banjo, though his focus is far from traditional. There is unease and an underlying gravity to music that is stark, edgy and gnarly in places, with an ominous drone haunting throughout. He set out to make a modern solo banjo album, and he’s done exactly that.