Peter Shaw

Talking Elephant re-issue Silly Wizard’s debut album from 1976 on which there is an authentic display of sterling virtuosity, and also the boldness of a band six years into formation making their first recorded statement.

The Walton Folk Festival team managed to rustle up an equally enthralling lineup, opening with Megson, with highlights from Lukas Drinkwater, Trials of Cato, Hannah Ashcroft, Daria Kulesh, False Lights and more.

On their latest EP, English folk trio Faustus tackle the Lancashire Cotton Famine which brought great hardship, unemployment and hunger among working people. They bring the ghosts of the past to life in their own unique way.

A musical exploration featuring many creatives, What a Boost is a creative high for Rozi Plain, so let’s hope this subtle-but-stunning album gives her the boost she so richly deserves.

It’s an album that solidly consolidates the success of her debut, but digs a little deeper on the way. Spine-tingling and a touch inscrutable. This is an album with mysteries worth investigating.

This Old River is built on the strengths of this duo with Tobias’s brilliant songs and his impassioned vocals delivering every nuance. Matching and elevating this is Lukas’s accompaniment – the whole album is beautiful, compassionate and astonishing.

Fisherman’s Friends the movie is as heartwarming and wholesome as a pasty on a drizzly day in Port Isaac. And it may well take the country by storm just like the shanty men who inspired the tale. Accompanying the release is the film’s soundtrack album ‘Keep Hauling’.

Peter catches up with singer, cellist, fiddle and viola player Rachael McShane, an original member of Bellowhead whose latest album ‘When All Is Still’ was released on the Topic Records last year.

If you are simply hankering for timeless folk, splendidly played and sung, that sounds ancient as days, but as fresh as a daisy, look no further. It’s the most important, the most beautiful, the most magical… saggy old soundtrack in the whole wide world.

Hide and Hair by The Trials of Cato is something very special. If there’s a more exciting debut album from a folk band this year, then I haven’t heard it. Their energy, originality and assurance draw a comparison to the Incredible String Band.

Ben Walker’s ‘The Fox on the Downs’ is his first solo EP on which he showcases his deft and intricate fingerstyle guitar with jaw-dropping arrangements of four solo guitar instrumentals. More, Please!

Paradise and Thorns is a rewarding and precious double album from Ashley Hutchings – ‘the single most important figure in English folk-rock’. Handsomely packaged, it’s a companion piece to his 1987 Gloucester Docks, an album that told a very personal love story.

Cherry-picked from two decades of output, this is a varied collection of consistently high quality. Listeners hankering for an echo of that sly Mr Fox (genuinely weird and wonderful) will find delight in the 70s composition, Fiddler’s Cross.

Who knows whether we can expect to see so many Fairports together on a stage again, but for now what we have is a brilliant best-of collection performed with the musicianship you might expect, but a vibrancy you possibly wouldn’t from a band with a half-century heritage.

This brilliant, eclectic and challenging new folk and experimental compilation has attracted a stellar cast of contributors while raising vital money for vulnerable young people in Southend. All in a very worthwhile cause.

Peter shares his highlights of the first ever Walton Folk Festival, a sold-out event with afternoon and evening sessions and a lineup of acts that could grace established folk festivals many times its size.

Kadia’s business card states that they perform, ‘Uplifting melodic folk music’ – and this fantastic young band do precisely that, and so much more besides, as ably demonstrated at this fantastic live performance.

Yes, it’s a bleak album – that’s it’s intent. But the compulsion to listen echoes the determination of those Victorian adventurers. There is something mystical and otherworldly about these three musicians and the alchemy they produce together. It’s well worth the treacherous journey to reach the other side.