Mike Davies

There’s nothing particularly musically fussy here, just the sound of two musicians in perfect synch doing what they do so well and, in the process, crafting what is sure to prove one of this year’s finest albums.

Medicine Songs is a dynamic, full-blooded reminder that, after 54 years of performing, the Canadian-born Cree singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie remains a voice that demands and needs to be heard.

Underscoring both her skill as a storyteller and her background as a musical ethnologist alongside her songwriting craft and understated, intimate and engaging vocals, if North Star was a coming of age, Carey’s third album marks her blossoming into a rich maturity.

Following on from 2015’s ‘Analogue Tales’, Birmingham’s James Summerfield returns for his sixth full-length release. ‘Doubt’ is arguably his most confident and wholly satisfying to date.

Mike Davies shares his top 10 albums of 2017 including The Young’uns whose album makes a solid claim to being the folk album of the year and Hannah Aldridge whose album he declares is “one of my platinum-plated favourites of the year.”

Almost four years since the release of their debut album, the Glasgow sextet, James Edwyn & The Borrowed Band, return with a solid and harder-edged set of guitar-driven alt-country.

Chris Stapleton’s ‘From A Room: Volume 1’ has just recently walked away with the CMA Best Album award. Based on the strength of Volume 2, they might as well start engraving that 2018 Album of the Year award now.

On their second in a proposed trilogy of EPs, India Electric Co demonstrate that they are out there on the cutting edge of reinterpreting traditional folk music for the modern era while never losing sight of the past.

Bring Back Home is the fifth studio album from Ange Hardy. It is one that is yet further testament that she’s a shining beacon illuminating the byways of traditional folk for today’s landscape, you should be beating a  path to its door.

The latest offering from Don Merckle offers a short but highly effective and, for many, resonant portrait of the experiences and feelings of those called to do their duty and for whom war seemed to offer the only escape from hard times.

Wild & Reckless was born from the stage production that Blitzen Trapper spent the better part of a year producing….a terrific album. “The wind don’t always blow and the sun don’t always shine”, sings Earley on the closing track, but the weather report here is just fine.

The press notes for Spades and Roses talk about the power of songs to help find peace, clarity and hope amidst the emotional wreckage of our everyday lives. Caroline Spence  is a testament to that.