Taken from his latest release, me, myself, god, watch Jonah Sissoyev performing ‘Bluebird’, one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in a long while. Also our Song of the Day.
On their debut album “Goodnight, Lad”, Sean R. McLaughlin & The Wind-Up Crows defy categorisation, delivering sonic shifts and unexpected moments to revel in.
While Fiona Apple’s drummer Amy Aileen Wood may prefer staying out of the spotlight, her solo album, The Heartening, may put an end to that. Challenging and invigorating, it examines the rhythms of a percussionist in a class of her own.
Avalanche Kaito’s music is like sped-up geological movement, defined by a detailed and often aggressive maximalism. Throughout Talitakum, the fragments pull together in tight cores, resulting in a gripping, uncompromising and constantly engaging album.
Ancestors is the second collection of folk songs from prolific Canadian musician Allister Thompson…what sets it apart are his interpretations -it’s as much a concept album about folk music as an actual folk album.
Listen to our Monday Morning Brew playlist featuring Flo Perlin, Jeb Loy Nichols, Brigid Mae Power, Msaki & Tubatsi, Dana Sipos, Kevin Morby, Deer Scout, Karima Walker, Kaia Kater, Juni Habel, Fern Maddie, Karl Blau, Herman Düne, Lemoncello, Cara Beth Satalino & more.
We met with guitarist Bill MacKay to discuss Locust Land, his third long player for Drag City. The album’s focus and detail shout confidence and clarity, and it features some of the most driving and uptempo songs he’s ever written.
Swallowtail, Jim White’s and Marisa Anderson’s latest offering, is an album of quiet assurance and power. Shaped through improvisation and musical conversation, it encapsulates everything there is to love about improvised instrumental music.
Arianne Churchman and Benedict Drew’s May is a hypnotically good album. It is a long, involving listen, panoramic in scope but thematically focussed, and it manages to be both celebratory and strange, a nod to our folkloric past and a mesmerising hymn to the present.
While Kevin Coleman’s Imaginary Conversations may contain only three tracks, it is one of the most varied albums of the year so far. It’s a sweeping and stunningly accomplished album, brimming with ideas, and offers a glimpse into multiple potential futures for American folk music.
Worlds Within Worlds turn their focus to the spiritual heartland of Gnawa music for their next release, featuring Abdel Benaddi, the most important hereditary Gnawa musician of his generation. Watch the accompanying video for Bouhala, the first single from ‘A Dream In Essaouira’.
