Mike Davies
Mike Davies
I wrote for Melody Maker and Sounds in the late 70s, have written for local, national and international music publications and have covered the West Midlands scene in Brum Beat for over 40 years. I currently present Alternative Roots on Brum Radio.
Teddy Thompson’s latest album, Never Be The Same, digs back into rockier seams for his first album of original material since 2020. With influences ranging from Crowded House and The Beatles to his father Richard Thompson, these songs explore love, change and the passage of time. The album title may speak of flux, but Thompson’s brilliance remains predictably constant throughout.
Following years of IVF and an on-stage miscarriage, Abigail Lapell was pregnant with her first child when she made her album Shadow Child. Nine of the songs represent a month of gestation, embracing moments of joy and loss, and addressing issues such as reproductive health. Sweet and tender, the album is tinged with sadness but comes to full term with hope and joy.
Brown Horse’s third album, Total Dive, is a bigger, bolder beast than anything they have attempted before. Snarling guitars and weary pedal steel carry songs steeped in isolation, loss and defiant dark humour, with nods to Neil Young, Jason Molina and Uncle Tupelo running beneath the scuzz. A pinnacle, reached in just three albums.
Sons of Town Hall’s Of Ghosts And Gods is intricately, beautifully and never ostentatiously arranged, the voices full of quiet emotion as the music and the words draw you in. Across its richly orchestrated sweep — brass, strings, woodwinds and acoustic guitar all woven together with quiet precision — it is at once an adventure story, and something genuinely haunting and divine.
Fueled by a traumatic breakup and the fragility of new beginnings, Valentine is Courtney Marie Andrews’ most vulnerable and sonically adventurous work to date. Drawing on influences like Tusk and Big Star, the album navigates emotional extremes through lush instrumentation and “nakedly exposed” vocals. It is a powerful reclamation of self-worth that uses music to transform dark-night-of-the-soul pain into transcendent art.
John Blek’s tenth album, The Midnight Ache, is a sublime, lo-fi journey into vulnerability. The record balances melancholic “insomniac hours” with a hopeful move toward the light. Featuring lush strings and dreamlike arrangements, it’s a beautifully crafted transition from past shadows into a brighter, more domestic musical landscape.
With John Smith’s now much higher profile, these revisited and, at times, transformative reimagined songs should, deservedly, find a far wider acclaim and audience than the originals. At the same time, ‘Gatherings’ serves to remind us that he is one of the true elite on the UK contemporary folk scene.
Centred on themes of dreams and the supernatural, with their vintage guitars accompanied by just Jon Thorne on double bass, Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage’s fifth album, The Strangers’ Share, sees a return to the single microphone intimacy of their debut. A captivating reminder of how, especially in the hands of this duo, less can so often be more. The album is indeed a shared pleasure.
Taking its name from a street in Birmingham that a teenage Jon Wilks would busk, Needless Alley is described as a patchwork of memories and marks a more autobiographical approach to his writing after previous trad folk-inclined material. These songs from his mental attic are definitely worth exploring, and, as a guitarist, he fully deserves his place alongside names such as Jansch, Carthy, and Simpson.
Ron Sexsmith’s 18th studio album, “Hangover Terrace,” is a raw and honest collection that explores themes of friendship, self-examination, and the passage of time. Despite its “wounded” core, the album radiates warmth and optimism through tracks like the tender “House Of Love” and the rocking “Camelot Towers.” The album showcases Sexsmith’s enduring talent and ability to please audiences with his sincerity and soul.
On Animal Poem, Anna Tivel’s latest album, she asks, “In the face of endless avarice and cruelty, how do we talk about the realness of love? How do we talk about destiny from the balcony of a nation in decline? How does our attention shape the way we touch the natural world?” It’s a masterclass in subtlety and emotional depth that doesn’t demand your attention but instead earns it.