Mike Davies

Following his collaboration with Calexico and the recent trilogy of EPs, Dean Owens finally gets to unveil the atmospheric and evocative Spirit Ridge featuring The Stone Buffalo Band.

Cole Stacey’s debut solo album, Postcards from Lost Places, is an album that repays repeated plays to dig into the weft and weave of his musical textures and discover the pull of these lost places.

“Loudon Live in London” was recorded during a residency at Nell’s Jazz and Blues in London in 2024. It finds Loudon Wainwright III in top form, covering favourites, five brand-new songs and working an appreciative crowd in his familiar chatty and self-deprecating form.

Looking for the Thread offers a captivating meeting of different but kindred musical minds of Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. All three can be proud of their collaboration; we can but hope for a sequel.

The ever-innovative and experimental sextet Bonfire Radicals returns with their five-track EP Flywheel, swirling musical colours and shapes recorded live in the round. Barkingly wonderful.

Mike Davies shares his Top 10 albums of 2024, including releases from Luke Jackson, Julian Taylor, Norman Paterson, Amy Speace, C. Daniel Boling, Zachary Lucky, Malachy Tallack, Mary Lee Kortes, Lizzie No and Ruth Theodore.

The rich storytelling of Norman Paterson’s ‘Loved’ reflects on the cherished memories of people and places rooted in the earth of his home; while the title may be in the past tense, the emotions, like this album, are enduring.

With ‘In the Shadow of John The Divine’, Chris Cleverley puts his personal spin on the usual festive fare that blends joy and wistfulness in the seasonal cocktail of often contradictory emotions, love and grief. Definitely one for your Christmas stocking.

With Paper Tigers, the fourth teaming of Boo Hewerdine and Brooks Williams as State of the Union, the creative spark shows no signs of diminishing – an unfussy vintage-sounding album played with simple, consummate ease by two outstanding artists.

Each time, I wonder how on earth Luke Jackson will surpass his previous album, but he manages to do so. With ‘Bloom’, he does so spectacularly, with dramatic moments and some hugely impressive storytelling.

Subtly understated in its melodies and delivery but with a profound depth of emotion, Letitia VanSant & David McKindley-Ward’s ‘Eye of the Storm’ is a deep album that sings to their musical chemistry – we hope it marks the start of a journey.

Very much in a classic 60s coffee house folk troubadour vein, ‘Love, Dan’ is C. Daniel  Boling’s latest offering; he just keeps on producing albums of outstanding quality.