Mike Davies

Grassy Roads, Wandering Feet is organic in feel, it’s an unassuming album that never makes a big fuss about the members’ skills, simply allows them to do what they do with consummate and fluid grace and ease, and, as such, offers a very enjoyable travelling companion.

Celebrating the band’s 30th anniversary, for their 28th album Howe Gelb has put together a sort of retrospective, revisiting not old songs, but rather the styles the band has embraced over the years. Its tripartite musical nature makes it an eclectic listen, a reminder of what a diverse, influential and inspired Howe Gelb really is.

In her notes on the album, Thea writes that listening back to the old songs was like being haunted by the ghosts of her past. Rather than exorcise them, she’s given them new life while continuing to graffiti the wall of the music industry with music that matters, music with a heart and a mind rather than a corporate game plan. Long may she be “the girl that went and …

What started as a duo performance with long-term musical partner James Ross has grown to larger stages including Celtic Connections. Star guests include Rhiannon Giddens, Anna Massie, Heidi Talbot, Cathal McConnell and many more. That’s a big parlour!

Luke Jackson’s latest album ‘This Family Tree’ is short but perfectly formed, sharply and sympathetically observed and emotionally involving. Further evidence that Jackson is shaping up to become one of the enduring major figures in the world of contemporary folk.

His last album saw him reinterpreting songs by his own favourite writers and singers, but here on his fifth album, Scott returns to his own pen for a collection of ten numbers. Songs that gets deep inside you.

On ‘Strange Tails’ Lord Huron has now blossomed into a full orchard of radio friendly, hugely infectious melodies and hooks, drenched in reverb and with punchy arrangements and instrumentation. This should see the band step out of the cult shadows and into the mainstream Americana spotlight.

Hailing from Glasgow, Robin Adams provides a garden of earthly delights on his latest release. The theme of the struggling artist informs much of the material – not surprising when you read of Robin’s own battles. Evocative at times of the vocals of John Martyn and the guitar work of Bert Jansch.

Hold You Like A Harness is the fourth album from singer-songwriter Philippe Bronchtein best known as Hip Hatchet. It’s an open and honest work, intimate in its delivery yet still capable of reaching out to larger audiences. Wonderful keening rustic Americana.

Essentially 70s shaded pop-rock with a touch of Americana, Carry Illinois’ Alabaster is filled with bright music, but the lyrics not always so. There’s enough here to provide a solid foundation on which to build.

This Is The Kit is back with her new album Bashed Out joined by her regulars as well as collaborators including both Desnner and his brother, Bryce, Beirut’s Benjamin Lanz and Matt Barrick from The Walkmen. The quality of the music and her craft are unmistakable.

The Lilac Time release their Ninth Album ‘No Sad Songs’, an album that is charged with an uplifting, buoyant vision of life. Given its April release, a quote TS Eliot quote fromThe Waste Land seems appropriate – “ breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Go gather.