Thomas Blake

An open secret, Cass McCombs is a talent lauded by critics and peers but remains something of an outsider. On Interior Live Oak, he’s in predictably fine form, delivering one of his strongest collections of songs that showcase an easily worn, hard-won maturity, with a perfect balance between concision and variation. This satisfying and beguiling album leaves you hoping it will finally earn him the broader recognition he so deserves.

Fletcher Tucker’s ‘Kin’ is a more earthy, rather than a cosmic music; it genuinely sounds like nothing else, an album full of ritualistic sonic patterns and precisely detailed shifts in tone and mood, an album rooted less in a single landscape than in the very idea of landscape, and all the ancientness and weirdness that implies.

Cory Hanson delivers a rare combination: clever arrangements and emotional heft. ‘I Love People’ feels like a continuation of 2023’s Western Cum, conjuring up dusty roads and shimmering horizons with rolling country-rock and mature piano ballads. Nailing this many styles is tough, but Hanson’s surefooted songwriting weaves the disparate elements into a vivid, unapologetically American tapestry with an almost magical precision.

The latest edition of the Ceremonial Counties tape series from Folklore Tapes features Bristol and Hertfordshire. Musician and visual artist Jake Blanchard tackles Bristol, the first part likened to Faust and Steve Reich in a competitive morris dance. Side two features Geology Disco and is devoted to Hertfordshire. While little is known of Geology Disco, the future of New Weird Britain is in safe hands.

We chat to Ruth Clinton and Cormac MacDiarmada of Poor Creature about their debut album, All Smiles Tonight. A deep dive into its making, their influences (from the Cocteau Twins to Ellen Arkbro) and more. The album feels like a new high point in the constantly evolving experimental folk scene centred around Dublin and a thoroughly modern foray into ancient musical territory. But is it folk?

On Columbia Deluxe, Fuubutsushi sound simultaneously like a bunch of musicians who have never met and a group who have been playing together for an eternity. These tracks, in a live setting, have developed a life beyond the logistical constraints of their conception. Beautiful and increasingly complex, they have become a celebration of live performance and a reminder of how music still plays a vital role in human interaction.

This month’s edition of the Ceremonial Counties tape series from Folklore Tapes features Essex and Rutland, two counties that share strong links to Britain’s Roman history. Laurel Morgan’s contribution, The Last Stand at Ambresbury, draws lines between the mythic Boudicca and modern ideas about landscape, ecology, feminism and rebellion, while guitarist and improviser Richard Chamberlain creates seven distinct pieces, each inspired by a different phase of Rutland’s history.

This Material Moment is Me Lost Me’s most personal album yet. On this new release, Newcastle-based Jayne Dent’s songwriting has become both more immediate and more accomplished, with each song existing in its own undeniable present. It’s an alarmingly good album, stormy and intense at one moment, wise and contemplative the next.

Tension, contrast and juxtaposition are words that inevitably come to mind at multiple points throughout All Smiles Tonight. Poor Creature are masters at harnessing that tension and creating soundworlds that are utterly compelling from start to finish. This is music that straddles darkness and light, and traverses the blasted terrain of loss in wholly unexpected ways, picking apart and reassembling the whole idea of folk music as it goes.

While Brìghde Chaimbeul has already established a distinctive musical voice, on Sunwise, she utilises it in new and unfettered ways; she treats experimentation and tradition with equal respect, always with an overriding sense that music is meant to be enjoyed.

Like Eric Satie in his day, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer realise that intelligent, modern music doesn’t have to be brow-furrowingly serious, even when serious themes are being explored. Different Rooms is the perfect example of how quick and luminous this kind of music can be.  

Matmos evidently revel in the spark that comes from intense collaboration. It’s a spark that has remained alight for nearly thirty years and shows no sign of dimming. Metallic Life Review is, above all else, a masterly repositioning of music into the realm of physical substance, where the inanimate becomes animate, and metal’s perceived harshness and coldness is alchemised into warmth and humanity. There’s something magical about that.