Mike Davies

While Hiss Golden Messenger shares the sentiments of many on the current state of affairs – he chooses to look to a brighter tomorrow, banging the drum for hope as he sings “I feel like my luck is turning…..We’ll be alright tonight.”  Hallelujah to that.

Variously likened to Mojave 3, Neil Young and Mazzy Star, Dripping Springs might be best described as Dream Americana, this is certain to expand Joana Serrat’s following and bolster her scrapbook of glowing reviews even further.

Heart of the Cave is an album inspired by an invite to explore Osimo, a town in Italy under whose streets lie 2,500-year-old caves with tunnels that once hosted religious secret societies. It’s an album that touches on the core of existence and spirituality and the shadows that hover around the fringes.

Jolie Holland & Samantha Parton, founding members of The Be Good Tanyas, re-join forces for Wildflower Blues. A very welcome reunion and hopefully just the beginning of an ongoing partnership. They are on tour in the UK & Ireland during October 2017.

Small Believer is the latest offering from Portland singer-songwriter Anna Tivel. She offers insightful and often moving images of ordinary lives drawn from stories heard while out on the road. Open, honest and deeply affecting, it’s her best work yet. 

Songs from the Attic is very much a personal journey by Hampshire-based musician and journalist Jon Wilks. His love for folk music manifests itself throughout this lovely album.

It’s impossible to listen to Marry Waterson without the inevitable comparison to her mother, Lal. However, this album is firm evidence that while the apple may not have fallen far from the tree, it has grown into very much its own orchard, one made all the richer by her partnership with David A. Jaycock. This is one to treasure.

Buford Pope’s Blue-eyed Boy is first class throughout. It may be three years since he recorded any actual new material, but if he’s  got any more like this in the archive, there’ll be no complaints if he decides to dust off a few more. 

Kim Lowings has been steadily climbing the folk league table since her Drifting Point EP debut back in 2011. Her latest offering ‘Wild & Wicked Youth’ backed by The Greenwood band places her in the first division.

Micah P Hinson’s modern folk opera ‘The Holy Strangers’ may not be the most commercial thing he’s ever released, but it’s certainly his most ambitious and compelling.

While Ian Felice’s ‘In the Kingdom of Dreams’ may not leave you feeling full of the joys of life, it does find grace in sorrow, which is perhaps, in these times, the best balm we can ask for.

As the title “After All These Years” might suggest, this is a retrospective set marking Edinburgh’s The Wynntown Marshals ten years together. “Europe’s best Americana band.” Here’s to the next decade.