Mike Davies

Following a diagnosis of a degenerative nerve condition and told he would no longer be able to play guitar, Amit Dattani taught himself a new way of playing, and, several years on, defiantly returns with ‘Wrong Kind of One’, an album that’s as strong as his debut and deserving of further glowing accolades.

Kate Daisy Grant and Nick Pynn’s “Songs For The Trees” is an enchanting album that originated from a simple request to sing about a different tree each month. Inspired by ancient arboreal folklore, Grant’s lyrics are captivating, enhanced by Pynn’s arrangements that give the album a spellbinding quality. It’s one of the year’s finest albums and an evergreen for the future.

Lunatraktors, the innovative “broken-folk” duo, unveil Quilting Points: a captivating album of reworked archival fragments, salvaged songs, and field recordings. Born from collaborations with artists and institutions, it weaves together diverse soundscapes. From the brooding melancholia of “Diffraction Pattern” to the pagan pastoral sounds of “The Hoard” and the defiant “Now The Time,” you’ll be hard-pushed to find a more marvellously inventive or mesmerisingly idiosyncratic folk album this year.

Thematically and musically, Between The Covers is unlike anything Paul Armfield’s done before; it’s a literary and literally gorgeous listen that deserves the musical equivalent of a Booker prize.

Musically, lyrically and thematically, a fire rages through the Brown Horse’s sophomore album, All The Right Weaknesses. It’s a stupendous follow-up that should see it easily featured on many year-end best-of lists.

Kris Delmhorst’s ‘Ghosts In The Garden’ is an entrancing album not about isolation and emptiness but, as she sings on the title track, how “everyone’s here/no one’s gone”.

With poetic touchstones that range from the metaphysical and Shakespeare to Dickinson, Plath and Auden, Polly Paulusma’s Wildfires is unquestionably her masterpiece, which, like the title, burns and blazes, forged alike in the anguish and euphoria of love and life.

The music Seth Lakeman makes and the passion with which he makes it has never faltered; The Granite Way is another exemplary reason why he’s the benchmark of contemporary English folk music.

Chatham Rabbits’ fourth album, Be Real with Me, is an honest and open album veined with regrets and desires that moves beyond their bluegrass borders to explore new musical territory.

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.