Mike Davies

For their fourth album, Canadian trio West My Friend enlist a full symphony orchestra and choir to augment their melodic brand of guitar, mandolin and accordion flavoured folk.

Their first new material since 2017’s debut album, Go Get Gone, this five-track EP finds The Worry Dolls in fine form. Hopefully, a new full album will be surfacing some time next year, on the evidence here it should be hefty stuff.

A departure from the secular and partly self-penned material on their debut, but remaining firmly rooted in their love of traditional Kentuckian bluegrass, there is an irresistible and infectious joy in what they do, so amen to that.

Journals, the latest album from Luke Jackson, demonstrates once again why he is one of the most distinctive voices, both literally and figuratively, on the contemporary folk scene. It’s time this was more widely recognised.

Just four months after releasing the studio version of Western Stars, now comes the soundtrack to the cinematic film version recorded live in Bruces own nearly 100-year-old barn.

Hannah Rose Platt follows up her well-received debut, Portraits, with a second set of variously musically lively and more reflective Americana-veined songs, featuring vocals from Sid Griffin and Danny George Wilson.

Eight albums in and it’s clear that Annie & Rodd Capps, while not looking to shake up the formula or push any envelopes, are holding their own on ‘When They Fall’.

Saskatchewan-born singer-songwriter Zachary Lucky returns with new album ‘Midwestern’. Old school folk and country, sung from the heart with sentiments to which everyone can relate.

With ‘Chosen Daughter’, Maz O’Connor presents a very personal but equally universal album that is veined, as per the title, both with the a sense of being wanted and the need to feel so, let it bring out the very best of your musical maternal instincts.

Often sailing a stream of consciousness and impressionistic imagery, Intergalactic Sailor is dreamily ethereal and melodically therapeutic in its calming eddies, it’s well worth booking passage across the cosmic seas.

While they clearly set out to create a good time, their consummately played approach to a celebration of traditional folk music is every bit as serious and as passionate as the Carthys and Watersons of this world.

Postcards & Pocketbooks is a fully comprehensive Bella Hardy retrospective and a well-rounded overview of one of the finest folk singer-songwriters of her generation and a useful staging post from which to launch the next chapter.