Danny Neill

Richard Thompson’s “Hippies, Thugs and Heroes” pushes the envelope much further in studio craft and arrangements than its predecessor. There are startling musical diversions and excursions throughout, with the full band bringing extra textures. Six decades in, this cornerstone of British folk-rock still has the capacity to evolve, and this album stands tall among his recent releases.

We spoke with Ohtis after his End of the Road set. He wasn’t having the best of days; it was the kind that would have pushed even the most chilled artists into stress overdrive, but he played and spoke to us anyway. He talked plainly about his new album, a friend’s stories he’d played on repeat during a dementia period, the gospel band he’d love to start, and more.

Biita Houdei’s solo debut “This Bed Was Made For Me” challenges quickfire disposability head-on. She sewed a patch for each of its fourteen songs, then recorded them over ten full, back-to-back days. The result exudes personality and feeling, a testament to the slow process and the commitment and patience required to create a complete work of art.

We caught up with Marisa Anderson at End Of The Road and chatted about her latest album, The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music; how she talked her way into accessing Harry Smith’s final record collection; and how, while recording the album, she chose to stay pretty close to the source material: “I wanted to learn from the material rather than impose myself on it.”

Charlie Parr’s “Rooming House” is a seven-song suite that follows John, who inherits a boarding house and rents rooms to those on the poverty line. Opening track “Duluth 1964” drops us into unthinkable trauma, and the title track’s quiet meal scene turns into a real gut-punch. Twenty albums into a celebrated career, Parr may have delivered his masterpiece.

Backstage at End Of The Road’s 20th anniversary, Kiran Leonard sat down with KLOF. He first played the festival in 2014, just before he turned nineteen. He talks about the maximalism of his early work, his interest in structure and trying things that supposedly don’t belong in song. Henry Cow’s “In Praise Of Learning” gets a mention too.

Danny Neill, alongside photographer Sophie Reichert, spends four days at Larmer Tree Gardens as End of the Road turns twenty, still sailing against the mainstream tide. YHWH Nailgun open with a sonic assault, Geese headline to an 80% approval rating, Ty Segall gets seen twice in one day, and ØXN spray-paint a space for folk tradition with murder ballads and drone-enriched codas.

Le Ren’s “Don’t Be Funny Without Me” is a phenomenally powerful album. The arrangements expand beyond the spareness of her earlier releases, with fiddle, drums and layered harmonies; this is one you will return to again and again.

Laura Veirs’ “Temple Songs” is a set of songs that are personal and immediate, crafted alone in a backyard studio with two microphones and a laptop. Veirs embraces wabi-sabi, welcoming imperfection and the environment seeping into takes. At 29 minutes and 11 songs, so many multitudes are contained within — a recording that chooses truth over gloss.

Samuel Blaney created “Island Rains” in moonlit reverie on the west coast of Ireland, with Adem Ilhan and Neil MacColl colouring the songs without ever overwhelming them. You can hear the influence of a life pared back to essentials, and a tangible sense of how tending something small becomes a way of steadying yourself against the wider world.

Sailing Stones’ “Slow Magic” is one of the most satisfyingly complete collections of songs I have heard this year. Built around matrescence, the transitions a woman goes through at the time of bringing new life into the world, the whole record plays like a kaleidoscopic whirligig, shimmering in and out of focus, crafted with a crackly analogue, hands-on human touch. Her best album yet.

On “Pt. Roadknight”, Leah Senior leans into the hazy fog of late-sixties, early-seventies folk rock, recorded with a natural analogue texture that lends these songs a human touch. It turns its inward gaze outward, offering her reflections with a clarity of purpose. As she reminds us in ‘Talk To Me,’ there is a fine line between focus and withdrawal, and this album walks it with rare grace.

Recorded live at Bear Creek Studios with no click tracks and minimal overdubs, “The Landfill” finds Fruit Bats in full flight and a songwriter discovering how immediacy translates when the whole room is burning bright. It underlines the prominent place held by Fruit Bats in the canon of modern, rootsy American songwriting.

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.

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.

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.

Eleven songs of top-drawer Americana, “Coin-O-Matic” is pure Deer Tick: unfiltered, honest, at ease in their own skin. Two decades in and self-produced for the first time, they draw on Rhode Island’s half-mythic characters and wear the Springsteen influence honestly with the closing five-song sweep, ultimately confirming the album’s quality — a long-storied band taking aim and hitting all their targets.

Neon Summer Skin is built around a simple revelation: childhood doesn’t end on schedule, and its afterglow can hit hardest when you think you’ve left it behind. Bedouine returns to the instruments of her early years — piano, trumpet, brass — and wraps memory in bossa nova sway, jazz warmth, and a touch of psychedelia. The result is intimate without being small, and deeply, unguardedly felt.