Mike Davies

Lord of the Desert is 3hattrio’s most adventurous and eclectic work yet, “pure peyote delirium enveloped in a haze of banjo, guitar, bass, fiddle lines and bass drum dancing around like the indigenous desert animal spirits”…long may they reign.

On Gem Andrews latest album she uses dark country to tackle themes of mental illness, poverty, community and destitution. A strong album – this is a  magnetic North, indeed.

Probably not something you’d fish out to put you in the party mood, but as a soundtrack to a good wallow in self-hatred, post-millennial despair and emotional squalor, this is down in the gutter with the best.

Widdershins is a potent work in response to a moment in time, when, whether it’s clockwise or anti, there seems to be, as Dylan put it, no direction home that is a road rather than a minefield.

The new Low Anthem album requires you take the time to fully listen and absorb, but like immersion in brine baths, the results have an unexpectedly relaxing and calming effect.

While the Matthews Southern Comfort band and the sound have, like the bourbon, mellowed warmly with age, the kick is still there on their latest offering ‘Like A Radio’.

Songs for Somewhere Else is another worthy addition to the British branch of the Parsons legacy library curated by the likes of Teenage Fan Club, The Goat Roper Band and Lewis & Leigh.

While Oslo-based Norwegian trio Darling West have been making wider ripples with some high profile tour support, this new album sees them turn those ripples into waves.

For the follow-up to 2015’s Into The Sea and his debut for At The Helm, Dean Owens took himself off to Nashville to enlist the services of go-to producer Nielson Hubbard. Southern Wind is an album that fully deserves to take Dean Owens’ career to a higher level.

A joy for genre purists and roots novitiates alike, this is among the year’s finest debut albums and assures Dattani a place at the same table as those that have both influenced and fuelled his love of the music he plays.

Make Way For Love was born at the end of a longtime relationship with fellow musician Aldous Harding. A break-up album drenched in melancholia, Williams’ songs are incredibly well-crafted reflecting both the personal and universal.

It’s taken 32 years to come up with an album that fully lives up to the euphoric promise of The Weather Prophets’ Almost Prayed, but those prayers have finally been answered with Pete Astor’s One For The Ghost.