Mike Davies

Red Tail Ring’s latest offering is a welcome addition to the continuing revival of American traditional music that has both a faithful adherence to the past and a sensibility of contemporary issues…pushing the tradition to new heights.

By slipping out at the end of the year, Winter In London may not get the attention it deserves, but this is well worth seeking out, heralding a further step up the ladder for a highly distinctive talent.

It’s taken a fair few years for Fields to go from playing on the family front porch and around the local bars to making the transition to a recording studio and a wider audience, but Martha Fields is making up for lost time with a vengeance, she has the potential to become a very significant name in Americana roots music.

Amanda Rheaume’s Holding Patterns is a terrific album, at the heart of which is the powerful ‘Red Dress’ on which she is joined by Juno Humanitarian Award winner Chantal Kreviazuk to tackle what she and others see as Canada’s cultural genocide. She tours the UK in January.

There’s many an artist out there mining America’s rich musical history and shaping it into their own experiences and observations; Jeff Crosby may well be one of the best.

Doghouse Roses return with their third album featuring a number of guest musicians including Jez Hellard and Laura-Beth Salter of The Shee. One that’s well worth the wait and is quite simply, their best work yet.

Hard to believe, but it’s twenty years since Gillian Welch released her groundbreaking debut album, Revival. To mark the occasions, she’s been through the archives and, along with musical partner David Rawlings, has put together Boots No 1: The Official Revival Bootleg, a double disc 21 track collection of demos, outtakes, alternate takes and other previously unreleased tracks.

Whilst you can play spot the musical namecheck if you have to, you’d be far better off to stop such swithering and just turn up the volume, and appreciate one of the finest musicians to have come out of Glasgow in the past decade.

Featuring 12 brand new songs produced by Thomas Bartlett featuring self-penned and songs written by friends and relatives: Beth Orton, Glen Hansard, Rufus Wainwright, Michael Ondaatje and Merrill Garbus of tune-yArDs.

The Slow Show return with their follow-up to last year’s debut album, White Water. Of Dream Darling, frontman Rob Goodwin says they’ve drawn even more on their classical influences this time around.

Like fellow Western Swing revivalists, Hotclub of Cowtown, the trio have a real affection and affinity for the music they play and, while it may, to some extent, be a niche market, acts like this ensure it’s a very vibrant one.

With the dust has barely settled on their last album, 3hattrio return with Solitaire, their third album, the arid imagery inspired by their red-rock southern Utah base. Inventive and experimental, but still firmly within the territory they have marked out for themselves.