Mike Davies

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.

Solo | Duo | Trio is the next best thing to actually having been there and a persuasive reminder that, whatever format he works in, Luke Jackson is one of the most dynamic and exciting live performers of his generation.

Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Texas by Yorkshire parents and now resident in Sheffield, Ash Gray trades in Texan alt-country. The catchy hooks, Gray’s soft-toned cosmic cowboy vocals and the infectious tunes are a treat for the ears.

Broken Stay Open Sky is the fourth album from the now London-based Cornish 60s psych-folk styled six-piece Red River Dialect. Released on Paradise of Bachelors it’s sure to bring them the extra attention they deserve.

It may not all be wholly autobiographical in a literal sense, but the emotional authenticity is clear, another terrific example of how exposing and exorcising personal pain can produce an artist’s best work while touching universal chords and perhaps giving voice to those less articulate in seeking catharsis.

While Will Varley may have produced his darkest album to date, with the extra dimensions afforded by the fuller instrumentation, it’s also arguably also his strongest.