Thomas Blake

Honed by high-profile support slots, Glaswegian songwriter Iona Zajac delivers a fiercely feminist and dynamically shifting debut. Bang traverses dream-pop, folk minimalism, and moody alt-rock, channelling the raw intensity of upsetters like PJ Harvey. Zajac is a songwriter with important things to say and a willingness to say them loudly and with a laser-like focus. Bang is a remarkably accomplished, statement-making achievement.

The final volume of Jacken Elswyth’s essential Betwixt & Between series features singer and multi-instrumentalist Elspeth Anne and the historic Welsh male choir Côr Meibion Gwalia. Anne offers a bleak, beautiful midwinter landscape of drones and dark carols, while the choir provides lo-fi, spirited wassails full of strange magic. It is a fitting conclusion to a project documenting British folk at its most raw and boundary-pushing.

Mysterious UK producer U maps the rural history of Archenfield in this ambitious new album. Blending ambient textures, field recordings, and plunderphonics, U moves beyond simple folk music into a complex sonic collage. From the hauntological piano of “Urchins” to the chilling folklore of “Black Vaughan,” the album is a labyrinthine exploration of time, memory, and landscape that is constantly changing and profoundly engaging.

Matthew Broadley’s debut as Greet, I Know How To Die, is a genre-defying journey, a link between the uncanny and the everyday, a bridge between two worlds. Anchored by an eerie harmonium drone and folk-horror aesthetics, this is a hugely impressive debut that doesn’t shy away from difficult musical and lyrical subjects.

Broadsides is Weston Olencki’s sound diary of a grand tour through the southern United States. Drawing on the long history of the broadside as social commentary, Olencki blends traditional folk forms with experimental sound art. From the timeless prelude of a railway station to an epic, transformative, post-minimalist take on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” this album is a bracing crystallisation of that journey.

One of the most wonderfully warped Ceremonial Counties tapes yet: The Clare Voyants explore the mystical and musical elements of John Clare’s life via a collage of free folk, found sounds, traditional melodies and spoken word, while The Universal Veil take inspiration from Horace Harman’s Sketches of the Bucks Countryside and produce something that sits between Wicker Man psychedelia and Ghost Box hauntology (and is arguably more mind-bending than either).

JJJJJerome Ellis is an enviably talented musician who has developed an entirely singular musical identity. Vesper Sparrow, Ellis’ second album, communicates in a way that makes us stop and think about our own modes of expression, emerging with a new understanding of how beauty and truth can be conveyed in unprecedented forms, and how form itself can be manipulated to become art rather than simply structure.

On her sixth solo album, Unfolding, Jessica Moss dives deep into drone and longform ambient soundscapes. The album is a journey through intense emotional abstraction—from the serendipitous “Washing Machine” to the beautiful, nightmarish “One, Now.” Moss then uses clashing textures to craft an explicitly political work inspired by Palestine before concluding with a stunning, multitracked hymn to hope, a quite stunning way to end an accomplished and highly relevant album.

Damien Jurado’s Private Hospital arrives as a unique book and download package, concluding his “Reggae Film Star” pentalogy. The combination of song lyrics and photo essay (Jurado is an avid collector of ‘found photos’) is abstract but powerful, creating a sense of wistfulness, melancholy or the uncanny. It is a cinematic, poetic collection that starts like a dream but reveals deep emotional resonance upon repeated listens.

Steve Gunn’s “Daylight Daylight” creates songs that are light as air but carry with them the weight of imagination. The music skirts genre, moving from chamber-folk to art-rock and jazz, evoking Nick Drake and John Martyn. Gunn builds compelling atmospheres through layered instrumentation, enveloping strings, and quiet, soulful singing. These songs stretch out, replacing gimmicks with sustained intensity. An engrossing album of dignified beauty.

Goblin Band’s A Loaf of Wax is a stirring and often spectacular live recording. The quartet can whip up a frenzied sandstorm of sound and transition to delicate sensitivity with consummate ease. They capture the kinetic energy and shared joy of folk music, a medium that thrives not only on shared space and collaboration, but also on shared feeling and companionship. Goblin Band are the best of all possible companions.

For their debut EP, daisy, Leilani Patao does things differently, refusing streaming platforms to foster a personal connection. The music is a compelling high-wire act, balancing experimental, glitched-out hyperpop with perfectly structured, dreamy pop-rock. Patao’s immense songwriting talent shines through the lo-fi, grungy production, creating a release that feels both diaristic and wonderfully detached.