Mike Davies

Eilen Jewell’s ‘Get Behind the Wheel’ serves as a testament to Nietzsche’s assertion that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, she’s clearly back in the driving seat.

With voice, lyrics and melodies, the songs on ‘Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing’ will draw you into its embrace. A totally captivating album that’s sure to bring Valazza the larger audience she deserves.

While it’s been a long hibernation, ‘Wish You Were Here’ finds Terry Emm in top form; it’s good to welcome him back into the warmth of the sun.

Produced by his son Tucker Martine and joined by guests that include Peter Buck, Bill Frisell, Laura Veirs, k.d. lang and Karl Blau. Music Man clearly demonstrates that the 81-year-old veteran Nashville-based songwriter Layng Martine Jr can sing them as well as write them.

El Tiradito (The Curse of Sinner’s Shrine) marks the next stage of Dean Owens’s hugely atmospheric collaboration with iconic Latin rockers Calexico. With Owens tapping into his inner Morricone, all it needs now is a screenplay.

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.