Thomas Blake

Good Habits’ “Better for Now” pushes outwards, from festival-ready trance-folk to intimate acoustic balladry. An overriding spirit of positivity runs through songs about body image and burnout, all carried on buoyant melodies. The result is a blend of virtuosity and sheer vitality, making them one of the most exciting bands on the British folk scene right now, and one of the most technically accomplished. 

Jake Blount’s “Single-Footing Horse” has him coming full circle, returning to the old-time mountain music played by Appalachian string bands that first nurtured him. It’s a joyous and technically brilliant batch of tunes, every bit as potent – and, in a way, just as experimental – as his earlier forays into afrofuturism.

Myles na gCopaleen’s An Béal Bocht sets out Irish identity as a series of gaps between expectation and reality. Trá Pháidín recognise that those gaps still exist, detect the places where they are widening, and – quite brilliantly – attempt to draw them together with a keen ear for the absurd and an impressive mastery of musical forms old and new, one that includes avant jazz, krautrock, and modern composition.

Karine Polwart and Jackie Morris talk to KLOF Mag about Spell Songs’ “In Thin Air”. The record follows the Seven Wonders of Bird: nest, egg, beak, song, feather, flight and migration, and grew out of a week-long Pembrokeshire residency. Polwart discusses ecology, folk tradition and the importance of physical albums; Morris explains her live painting alongside the band on tour and her relationship with birds.

It’s foolish to attempt to situate Sourdure’s music within a historical context; it feels both pre- and post-everything. Sung in Occitan and French, his latest offering, Outredore, features Lisà Langlois, Le Diable Dégoutant, and Eloïse Decazes. It is an absolute singular album that floats freely and pierces deeply.

Sairie’s long-awaited debut, Beneath the Spreading Tree, sounds like a lo-fi Pentangle with an added layer of hauntological strangeness. The Brighton trio’s lead vocals make songs seem haunted by their own flickering shadows. This ageless-sounding debut is starkly in its beauty and richly rewarding.

Birdvox are a kind of supergroup, and on ‘Shamming the Drama’ the quartet may, at any given time, backtrack into traditional Scottish folk, sidestep into pulsing disco beats, and lean into glitchy, blissful electronica. Their debt to traditional music gives their sound a unique edge, but of all the many elements that make Birdvox sound like no other band, that sense of community might be one of the most important.

On his second album, “Mudlark Ballads”, Dublin singer Macdara Yeates unearths little-known relics of the city’s musical history, his arrangements more confident and varied than on 2024’s “Traditional Singing from Dublin”. His ability to capture the mood of a song is second to none; they are valuable treasures in his hands. 

Spell Songs’ third studio album, In Thin Air, is a creative reaction to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s The Book of Birds. Fifteen songs deal with different aspects of avian life, from nest-building to migration, building up a noticeable narrative thrust. Again and again, this album cleverly conflates the lives of birds with human experience. It is an album in constant fluttering movement, one that soars and sings.

Alex Dupree’s “Talking to the Dog” is outsider-folk made with a completely unique eye for lyrical detail. Dupree moves between country twang, cosmic psychedelia and soulful confession with the ease of a picaresque poet-jester-troubadour. You could pick any couplet and it would stand against the best lyric writing of the last sixty years. Let’s hope he finally gets the credit he deserves.

Elanor Moss’s debut “The Knife, The Needle” balances a quiet, subtle mode of expression with a searing intensity of feeling. Arrangements create an all-enveloping sound in which the little lyrical razor blades are skilfully hidden. There is nothing loose or mild about her artistry. She is in full control of every moment, exposing the soft tissue of human emotion with unerring accuracy.

Mama’s Broke’s Amy Lou Keeler and Lisa Maria discuss “Reunion,” their latest album, one of stark emotion and stunning but subtle playing. Born from Nova Scotian roots, Appalachian tradition and Eastern European influences, their deliciously dark folk resists easy labels. The pair talk origins, co-writing, folk as political expression, and the collective feeling that keeps their collaboration fresh after a decade on the road.