Mike Davies

Cheer Up is a journey through darkness, self-loathing and doubt into the light and salvation…John Blek’s voice has never sounded better; it’s unquestionably his finest work yet.

As the song says, when the nights grow dark and the days overcast, we all need dreamers to shine a light and strike a spark to help us see the path; with Dreamers, the Wild Ponies shine their brightest.

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings’ Woodland is steeped in timeworn American folk roots but filtered through a contemporary Americana lens; they remain the benchmark for acoustic roots duos – consummate brilliance.

Leith-based folk music project Fidra deliver a stunning debut album. ‘The Running Wave,’ is as rugged, passionate, and enigmatic as the beautifully unforgiving land it celebrates…one of the finest Scottish folk albums of the year.

Five years since their last full-length album, Strange News Has Come To Town demonstrates that Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds remain as vital a musical force as ever.

On the final song of Linda Thompson’s Proxy Music there’s a refrain that pretty much summarises the whole album “Bound together in blood and song, who can break us?/When we are singing loud and strong, who can take us?” I hear no arguments to the contrary.

Paul Armfield’s Trees is an arboreal delight, commissioned by Gift To Nature, the songs give a unique voice to the different trees that grow on Sibden Hill in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight.

The rhythms of Anna Tivel’s ‘Living Thing’ ride waves of anxiety, resilience and hope, washing up on a shore that ultimately looks out to the light on the horizon rather than the darkness behind.

After a six-year hiatus, Old Man Luedecke returns with ‘She Told Me Where To Go’; re-energised and reinvented, this is one of his finest albums to date.

Ned Roberts’ Heavy Summer is a pastoral folk album with gentle Laurel Canyon musical breezes and echoes of Nick Drake, James Taylor, and Tim Hardin…a meditative and quietly absorbing listening experience.

Produced by Jim Moray and featuring several special guests, Out of the Rain is a glorious, re-energised return from Blair Dunlop that should comfortably reinstate him among folk rock’s upper echelons.

On her long awaited third solo album Wanderer, Ruth Moody’s striking vocals sketch out true life moments with a warm intimacy that stays with you long after the album’s end.