Johnny Whalley

On their 7th studio album, Track Dogs are joined by a host of special guests including Cathy Jordan of Dervish. With ‘Where to Now?’, they have produced a set of songs that are bound to delight their many established followers and ensnare plenty of new ones.

The variety and quality of Old Blind Dogs latest album pretty much demanded I write about each track…it has reignited an evangelical flame; Knucklehead Circus is an album that can change lives.

We chat to Eliza Marshall, Catrin Finch, Dónal Rogers and Jackie Shave, members of Freedom to Roam, about their album The Rhythms of Migration which will be launched next month at Cecil Sharp House followed by a UK Spring tour.

Over eleven years of gigs and now four studio albums, Mànran have always shown a healthy appetite for innovation but with Ùrar they’ve taken that to a new level. With a new line-up, they’ve produced an album that sets a fresh benchmark against which to judge contemporary Gaelic music.

It’s not often that, at first listen, an album almost literally takes your breath away. But Mishra’s ‘Reclaim’ bristles with vibrant energy and has a freshness and lightness of touch that did just that.

With their songs often providing a social commentary for our times, Winter Wilson’s latest offering, The Passing of the Storm, tackles contemporary themes head on and showcases their maturing sound. It’s an unmissable album.

Johnny Whalley shares his highlights from this year’s Gate to Southwell festival including Anxo Lorenzo, Spiers & Boden, Gigspanner Big Band, Talisk, The Henry Girls, Banter, Damien O’Kane and David Kosky, Tom Lewis, The Breath, Chris Wood, The Young’uns and many more.

The changing moods of Sam Kelly and the Lost Boys‘ “The Wishing Tree” form a big part of its charm. From the thought-provoking lyrics to the musicianship, you’d be hard pushed to find the merest chink in their armour and here they demonstrate that to perfection.

As Maartin Allcock said his final farewells from the stage at Cropredy in 2018, we all knew his musical legacy would continue to entertain and astound for years to come. Now, Talking Elephant have helped that process along by re-releasing OX15.

Johnny Whalley shares some of his highlights from this year’s Wickham Festival which went the extra mile in delivering an incredible lineup to an audience that clapped, cheered, sang and danced, showing that live music could, once again, be enjoyed in a muddy field.

With ‘Torus’, James Lindsay challenges our preconceptions of music made using traditional instruments. This is music that demands your attention and pays you back handsomely.

The line-up on ‘I Am of Ireland’, reads like a who’s who of the mainly Irish but also Irish American and British folk music world. There’s plenty of enjoyable music here and if it guides you back to Yeats’ poetry, well, that’s a worthwhile bonus.