Danny Neill

Singles is a very welcome, super-quality compilation release from the Smoke Fairies, who were the first UK band to sign with Jack White’s Third Man Records label.

It is on the forward-thinking ‘Theatre’ that Anna Mieke’s true artistic voice begins to emerge. It is a heady tangle of passing feelings, temporary thrills and vivid, heavy real-world matter all wrapped together in pure and lush acoustic folk. 

With ‘Out Of This Frame’ Rachel Taylor-Beales expresses large on a widescreen canvas that allows room for all her artistic faculties to breathe. This is an album that invites you in for a long ride, and it will not disappoint those who invest the time to get on board.

While tackling difficult subjects, Jeb Loy Nichols’s ‘The United States Of The Broken Hearted’ is ultimately a soother; he never loses sight of the restorative beauty in music and hope found in basic person-to-person interaction; these are things which still make life worth living.

Sun Ra Arkestra’s ‘Living Sky’ is so sublime, this is music to bathe in and soak it up as the intricacies and delicacies of the many layers of detail slowly unfold and shower the listener in pure interplanetary wonder.

Goat have risen and served notice of their return with ‘Oh Death’, the most earth-shakingly punchy album of their career so far. The effect these ten tracks leave on the listener is head-spinningly wonderful; lose yourself in the giddy delight of the experience.

Eliza Carthy’s Queen Of The Whirl is all top-drawer…the element that fires listeners up the most is that voice. As far as natural-born instruments go, it is one of the best and wow, does she know how to use it.

On ‘Edyf,’ Cerys Hafana’s sound is simultaneously ancient in feel yet intriguingly modern with a vital 21st-century edginess. On each listen, new layers reveal themselves…it doesn’t follow any recognisable path or template, but then aren’t these the records that endure the longest?

On The Cinder Sheet, the delicate psych-folk sound of Sairie is delightfully unpredictable. They steadfastly avoid well-trodden routes with remarkable results. Anticipation grows for where they can take their open-eared psych-folk vision next.

With ‘His Last Letter’, Geoff Muldaur has curated a behemoth of a project with packaging that befits the ambition; this is undoubtedly the most annotated and sympathetically presented new music release of 2022 – it’s a deep joy on every level.

Rachael Dadd’s ‘Kaleidoscope’ really does live up to its title; there is so much nuance in those deep grooves, it’s a potential career-best for an artist with an admirably understated excellence.

With Streams of Forms, Marlais stitches together traditional folk and ambient electronica in ways that are ground-breaking. Bold and hypnotizing, it will be worth keeping an ear out for a taste of whatever this outside-the-box sonic chef cooks up next.