Mike Davies

Approaching his 78th birthday this month, Bruce Cockburn returns with ‘O Sun O Moon’, a terrific album, featuring a number of very special guests…possibly one of his best.

Patrick Pritchard’s latest album, a collaboration with the Canadian poet Patrick Woodcock on which eleven of his poems are set to music, is one steeped in wisdom, elegance and refinement.

An acoustic reincarnation of Scott Matthews’ 2020 album New Skin, Restless Lullabies is a whole different listening experience, more intimate, but, note for note, every bit its equal.

Reflections On The Glass Age, an acoustic reworking of Dan Whitehouse’s acclaimed 2022 album, is a completely different listening experience, one to be embraced in calm and solitude and a glowing illustration of his versatility as a musician to bend songs to different purposes.

While Early Works may not be an indication of where Samantha Whates’ next album might be at, the time she devoted to its creation during lockdown was an undeniably sweet diversion.

To echo a line in one of the songs, if old-time Americana is your sort of music, then Low Lily’s debut follow-up, Angels in the Wreckage, flings heaven’s gate wide open.

Trapper Schoepp’s ‘Siren Songs’ is a consistently, infectiously melodic album that makes you positively want to head for the nearest highway so you can cruise with it pumping out of the car speakers.

Cloudheads is O’Hooley & Tidow’s most personal and most contemplative work to date; glowing with the consummate musicianship they’ve crafted over the past 10 years, that international profile seems set to grow bigger still.

Drawing once more on his life on the rural farm he built in Indiana, including family, tradition and community issues, Tim Grimm charts a more internal and personal landscape on his new album The Little In-Between, that again marks him as one of America’s finest songwriters.

A standard bearer for Southern Gothic Americana noir, you don’t come to Ben de La Cour albums looking for an uplift to get you through the day, but his new album, Sweet Anhedonia, despite the comfortably numb evocation of the title, holds dark pleasures indeed.

Mike Tod’s self-titled debut is an excellent addition to the increasing interest in old time American music, both preserving its heritage and infusing it with contemporary musical relevance; I suspect and trust this is just the first committing Mike Tod’s ethnomusicological ventures to disc.

After 52 years of making albums, Chip Taylor doesn’t appear to be slowing down. The Cradle Of All Living Things is a generous double album, one that offers comfort and ideally listened to in those quiet twilight moments.