Mike Davies

There’s a cinematic sweep to the new album from Kris Gruen with a screenplay built around love, family, dreams and hope.  Explore its shores and escape.

While it’s an interesting collection of choices, it’s a stunning piece of work from an artist who may be putting his travelling shows away but, at 76, remains at the peak of his creative and musical powers.

An album of personal and political power, passion and perception, it is hugely persuasive proof that Petrie most deservedly earns her place at the table.

While Baltimore-based folk singer Letitia VanSant may no longer work in social and environmental advocacy, as this terrific album ably proves, the day job hasn’t changed, it’s just altered its channels.

A love found, lived and lost in eight songs, simply but beautifully crafted in its musical and emotional notes, it’s the album equivalent of a Richard Linklater or Woody Allen bittersweet romance.

It takes real skill and inspiration to make the new versions sound like that’s how they were always meant to be. The True Adventures of Independent Country have both in abundance.

Musically situated somewhere between late 60s American folk and early 70s Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter territory with lyrics, that address the personal and the political.

AHI’s debut follow-up is suffused with a similar optimistic and positive vibe with home as the anchor of hope. The swelling musical arrangements in which his songs are couched, only serve to bolster the emotions they stir.

The London-based folk rock outfit returns with a pointedly eponymously titled third album that, as such, serves to underscore their musical self-confidence as well as standing as a statement of identity while staying true to their 60s West Coast and psychedelia influences.

The album title (and the song’s lyrics) serves as an image of the distant horizon and the need to move on. The last few years have been a  hard road for Winslow-King to walk, but, as this album amply proves, his feet haven’t failed him yet.

Chasing Ghosts is Philip Marino’s best yet, a 10-track collection of predominantly acoustic-based Americana that harks to such influences as John Mellencamp, Dylan, Cat Stevens and Neil Young. Seek him out. 

Featuring Christian Sedelmyer and Rachel Baiman, 10 String Symphony’s latest album finds them pushing the musical boundaries of their instrumentation with Kris Drever on production.