Simon Holland

For their sixth album, A Forest of Arms, the Great Lake Swimmers find their principal songwriter and lead voice, Tony Dekker, at his most potent. The album bristles with some of their strongest tunes and the most dynamic playing that the band have realised so far.

With a talent partly forged in Florida and fuelled by French cinema’s New Wave Robert Chaney’s Cracked Picture Frames marks the arrival of a notable new voice on the London music scene. The album is sharp, intelligent, thoughtful and moving, as Robert sings, “I got some simple words to say,” but he says them so well, you can’t fail to be mightily impressed.

With a new line up including Dan Walsh, Paloma, Joe and Tom have pushed the UFQ to new heights and The Escape offers exactly that with myriad musical highlights and global grooves to get lost in for months. This is the band at their brilliant best so make sure you catch them live on their current tour.

The Spyglass & The Herringbone gathers up all of Jackie Oates promise to date, dusts it down and adds polish to present a sparkling jewel of a folk record. It’s a rare and most refined thing of gift of great beauty and as good a record as you could rightly hope for, that’s all yours for the small price of admission.

Block booking Dublin’s prestigious Vicar Street for a month of concerts was a bold move, but one that has paid off handsomely for Paul Brady, with a little help from his friends. You can hear it for yourself on The Vicar St. Sessions Vol. 1 which is released this month via Proper Records. Read our review here.

Tom Russell’s epic The Rose Of Roscrae is the crowning achievement of one of America’s most potent songsmiths, a brilliant and dramatic, western folk opera with an all star cast. It could just be the single most important Americana release of all time.

For his second album A Day Like Tomorrow Fabian Holland returns with more magical guitar playing, a much bigger sound and another superb set of songs and the notable addition of percussionist Fred Claridge, a young and up coming star himself, while Jacob Stoney’s keyboards add variety and texture to the bigger sound that producer Mark Hutchinson has helped Fabian realise.

Kris Drever and Boo Hewerdine, both exceptional on their own, bring their collaborative skills to Last Man Standing a duo EP of song craft at its finest. With the tour just underway and the first date tonight, there will be a chance to see just how far that Kris and Boo can push this partnership. With two songwriters as good as this pairing you should make every effort to see …

Having told us about their Equation days and their early musical beginnings in part one of our interview, Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman now bring the story of their Folk Award winning duo up to date. They talk openly about their challenges, their new album, songwriting and more. They are on tour now.

Former Young Folk Award finalists, the Jaywalkers have now been recognised with an Emerging Excellence Award and the unique musical tapestry of Weave lives up to the billing. Their unique sound mixes their love for progressive American bluegrass forms with a Lancashire hotpot of working life and social injustice.

Constant innovators and superb musicians, Lau invited Joan As Police Woman to produce the new album The Bell That Never Rang. It charts bold new frontiers. Is it the best Lau album yet? There’s absolutely no doubt about it!

We have an exclusive premiere of Lau’s dramatic new video for ‘The Bell That Never Rang’. We also talk to one of the video co-directors David Liddell who provides a unique insight into the film – “It’s an epic piece of music and I wanted to take it seriously and do it justice.”