Mike Davies

Life’s What You Make It is another intoxicating covers collection, curated by Lush founder Mark Constantine, featuring some well-known folk names, that again reminds us that music is only limited by the imagination you bring to it.

About Time, Hannah White’s follow-up to her highly acclaimed Nordic Connections, finds her positively luminous as she delivers ten self-penned songs that speak to her musical influences and life experience.

Jess Jocoy cuts to the heart of universally recognisable emotions, doubts, fears and hopes as she calls on the listener to stare despair in the face and refuse to be its victim.

Lady Mondegreen is not so radical as to alienate the purists but sufficiently filtered through a contemporary folk lens to attract audiences wanting fresh readings. Fellow Pynins have made a fine contribution to the canon that respects the heritage while ploughing new furrows.

Heidi Talbot’s ‘Sing It For A Lifetime’ may have been born of hurt, pain and confusion, but there’s a strength within its musical veins. This may be the best work of Talbot’s career to date.

Musically relaxed, melodically infectious, lyrically witty and insightful in equal measure: in other words, precisely what you’d expect of and want from a Steve Forbert album.

Valorie Miller’s ‘Only The Killer Would Know’ is part ecopolitics-activism (a sort of musical equivalent to the film Dark Waters), part-excursion into troubled relationships, it’s an at times swampy slow burner that progressively gets deeper inside you the more you play it.

Based out of L.A., Stand True is the second full-length album from The Americans, showcasing their roots-rock Americana in solid style and making a good argument for them to be considered up there with the best of the new standard-bearers.

The Wardens’ ‘Sold Out’ is a simple, unfussy album, but hugely appealing to a way of life and a musical genre that is too often forgotten in today’s hyperactive world and the onslaught of processed Nashville country. This is as organic as it gets.

St. Arnaud’s ‘Love and the Front Lawn’ is a light, wry, witty, musically breezy and irresistibly toe-tappingly catchy album that fully deserves entry into the pantheon of pragmatic optimism.

Old Crow Medicine Show return with ‘Paint This Town’ on which they balance what they describe as an obligation to talk about the more difficult things happening in the world and ensuring everyone’s having a great time while they do it – they admirably succeed.

Garrett Heath’s previous album, Kingdom Come, effortlessly earned a place among my top 10 albums of  2021, and the follow-up, The Losing End, presents a convincing case for making that a double.