Glenn Kimpton

If you like your music honest and free from studio beeps and production flourishes and your vocals real and untouched by autotune, then this new album from Anglo-American duo Cath and Phil Tyler should hold you. Well worth the eight-year wait.

With A Hymn for Ancient Land, Jim Ghedi has taken big strides in his sound to create a small masterpiece, a homage of sorts to the subtleties of nature, place and space.

Ralph McTell & Wizz Jones return with ‘About Time Too’, an extension of last year’s ‘About Time’ and very much cut from the same cloth. Throughout, it sounds like they’re playing for fun, nothing is too perfect or polished – one of the album’s key strengths. Lovely stuff.

On ‘Singing Ways to Feel More Junior’, Luke Daniels delivers yet another highly innovative collection. An album that is full of fascinating and meticulously crafted song from an artist with his finger on the pulse. Out Now on Gael Music.

dbh has been involved with plenty of interesting music coming out of Manchester for many years now but he also creates his own mercurial and gorgeous solo albums, which Mass is the third of – a mesmerising and constantly engaging thirty-seven minutes.

Megan Henwood’s emerging maturity as a songwriter and performer resonates throughout the twelve songs on River on which a fascinating soundscape accentuates her consistently tight and skilful writing and singing.

Eight years after the first of Jon Boden’s dystopian albums was released comes Afterglow, an urban tapestry of sound and stories that leaves one impatient for the final chapter. Here he discusses the albums’ conceptions, folk sociology and the art of leaving space.

On Laura Baird’s debut solo album, ‘I Wish I were a Sparrow’, she captures the spirit of the old field recordings and reveals little nuggets of joy throughout on which original and traditional songs work fluidly alongside each other. Listen to the premiere of her original Wind Wind.

Afterglow is a full, large scale and grand piece of work that is as intelligent as it is entertaining, and it confirms Jon Boden as one of the most interesting and exciting British singers and arrangers currently working.

Every new Martin Simpson album is one to look forward to, but Trails and Tribulations feels like a biggie, even by the Sheffield string-master’s standards. We listened in as he explained the light and shade running through the set, the importance of nature and the timing of the songs.

It’s a testament to Willie Watson’s talents that he can tackle such a variety of songs on Folk Singer Vol.2, from the popular to the obscure and treat them with obvious respect and skill. Even more impressive is how well this second set of folk songs hang together and never outstay their welcome.

Martin Simpson’s ‘Trails and Tribulations’ is a classy, elegant and very confident set that doffs its cap to some top-drawer contributions from some of the country’s very best musician’s and that also benefits from an engineer and producer in mean form.