Alex Gallacher

This week’s Monday Morning Brew playlist clocks in at over two hours with all new releases, ft. Elanor Moss, Rosie Miles, Niamh Bury, Alice Boyd, Claire Cronin, claire rousay, Sheherazaad, Josienne Clarke, M G Boulter & Jenny Sturgeon, Sam Burton, Liana Flores and more. Plus three album recommendations covering a viral hit from Brazil, Australian Post-Punk, a Glasgow musician challenging the folk orthodoxy.

The Male Pattern, the project of Queens songwriter, novelist and English professor Will Schwartz, shares “Charlie (The Robbery)” from the forthcoming album “I Was Shot in the Heart!”, out September 25th via Barely Out Recordings. A character-driven narrative ballad featuring Danny Bateman of Frog on piano, it’s darkly funny, clever, and “sneakily beautiful”.

David Murphy & Ether Ensemble have shared “The Rain Song”, a reworking of the Led Zeppelin ballad for pedal steel guitar and seven-piece ensemble, with all Bandcamp proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders. The single follows Murphy’s acclaimed debut “Cuimhne Ghlinn”, which Glenn Kimpton called “an extraordinarily great album” in these pages. A new studio album is due in 2027.

Jon Wilks releases his rendition of “Geordie” on September 4th, marking fifty years of Martin Carthy’s “Crown of Horn.” Carthy’s version was so definitive that recording his own “always felt like turning up to a house that was already lived in.” The Songs of Martin Carthy tour changed that — two semitones up, with a new jaunt and swing.

Allison de Groot and Rich Ruth have today shared their second single, ‘Distance From Then’. With its earthy birdsong opening and unadorned banjo and violin, Ruth soon creates a whole world around it. As Allison says, “Like so much of the music on this album, our two very different musical worlds sent the tracks in unexpected directions.”

Watch the video for “Green Grow the Laurels”, Josienne Clarke’s stark new rendering of the traditional song, directed by Alec Bowman_Clarke. The single accompanies the announcement of “Regenerene MMXXVI”, a 12-track album that reveals her recent standalone singles are part of a larger return to the traditional material that first shaped her career.

Read our latest Substack Newsletter and enjoy our new Monday Morning Brew weekly playlist, featuring a stack of new releases from Sam Amidon, Ohtis, Natalie Wildgoose, Martin Simpson, Rachel Sermanni, plus some older favourites from Arborea, Two Wings, Great Lake Swimmers, The Gloaming and lots more.

In our latest KLOF Mixtape listen to new music from Falmouth-based Blind Yeo, with two tracks from their debut album The Lemoine Point, Black Duck & Elena Setién, Marvin Tate, Sam Amidon & Sam Wilkes, Arun Sood & Angeline Morrison, Macdara Yeates, Mama’s Broke, Paahto & The Bull (Patrick “Paahto” Cummins and John Francis Flynn), Al Khair, FRMR, Laura Veirs and more.

Combining stop-motion animation made from leaves, seeds, and flowers with live footage, Mamas Broke share the video for ‘Wildflowers’, a stunningly beautiful, lyrically enigmatic ballad with a deceptively simple acoustic guitar at its heart. It’s taken from their new album, Reunion, out today on Free Dirt Records/Forward Music Group.

Chicago trio Bitchin Bajas, featuring Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan, share a live video for “Ajami”, filmed at their Los Angeles Lodge Room show on miniDV tape by Shambling History. The track is from their new EP Isle Peaks, out today on Drag City. They’ve also announced a new show at Chicago’s smartbar, adding to an already packed autumn of both US and EU/UK dates.

Sam Beam, the visionary multi-instrumentalist behind Iron & Wine, announces ‘Hen’s Teeth (Deluxe Edition)’, out 22nd September via Sub Pop, featuring four previously unreleased songs along with acoustic versions of two fan favourites. Listen to the new single ‘California Sober’, released today, along with an acoustic version of fan favourite ‘In Your Ocean’.

Animal Collective’s Geologist (Brian Weitz) began 2026 with a sonic bloom when his debut solo album, Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?, dropped on Drag City. This November, he’ll be presenting his rippling songscapes across stages in the UK and the Iberian Peninsula. Watch the new Nick Ciontea video for the album closer “Sonora”.