Mike Davies

Julian Taylor’s third solo-credited studio release, Pathways, finds him in a reflective mood and ranks him alongside fellow Canadian folk music luminaries Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Joni Mitchell.

The End Of The Rainbow is one of Sean Taylor’s most impassioned albums; for all the tribulations, he ultimately offers the hope and faith that “the world keeps turning by and by”.

While it’s probably fair to say that Si Kahn’s name is not as popularly well-known as that of Seeger or Guthrie, as Labor Day – and the many albums before it – unequivocally demonstrates, he’s every inch their equal.

Jamie Sutherland describes his second solo album, The World As It Used To Be, as songs with the sense that things aren’t black and white; laced with memories, hope and regret, it ultimately sounds the simple affirmation that “we will rise above the darkness”.

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.