Mike Davies

Son of the Velvet Rat just keep getting better, and on Ghost Ranch, they are joined by several special guests, including Jolie Holland and Marc Ribot, to deliver what is unquestionably an album of the year.

Jack Francis’ Early Retirement is a ‘stupendous’ concept album about endings and new beginnings, riding out fallen dreams, and trying to navigate modern society as an old soul in a new world.

Bring The Tide In is a rather lovely ebb-and-flow quartet of poignancy-tinged songs that serve as a reminder of Iona Lane’s luminescent talent and is hopefully an early signpost of a new album in the not-too-distant future.

Molecules, the fourth full-length release from Ma Polaine’s Great Decline, seems to have been sprinkled with fairy dust and, while still mingling their jazz, blues, Americana and folk influences, glows with something special.

In discussing their latest album, On A Golden Shore, The Hanging Stars asked, “Wow, what did we do there?”. It’s a sentiment listeners are sure to echo on hearing this impressive offering.

Deceptively philosophical and sneaking shafts of light between the curtains of darkness, Josh Fortenbery’s debut album ‘No Such Thing As Forever’, promises him a bright future.

While quietly understated, the vital messages found in the songs of Maddie Morris on ‘Skin’ are no less potent. It’s a remarkable full-length debut album that should consolidate her position as a rising star in the folk firmament.

If you’ve not seen Serious Sam Barrett play live, ‘A Drop of the Morning Dew’ will most certainly persuade you that you should as you hear him win over his audience at the Bacca Pipes Folk Club, where this album was recorded.

‘Diamond Days’, his first solo album in four years, finds Brooks Williams at his very best with just those six strings and vocal cords for company.

Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz’s ‘Simple Motion’ is a highly appealing album by two consummate musicians who have nothing to prove, making music for the joy of it and, in turn, affording that same experience in those who hear it.

Andy Skellam’s latest album, Brighten up the Place, is a bountiful offering of well-crafted, warmly sung, surreally poetic and calming pastoral folk. Don’t miss his album tour which kicks off this week.

Willi Carlisle’s Critterland, an album steeped in and driven by contradictions, its fingers grubby with the dirt of real life in all its joy and despair, confirms him as a strikingly individual voice.