Thomas Blake

It shouldn’t come as a surprise – despite Stick in the Wheel’s fearsome, uncompromising and unashamedly experimental attitude to folk music; the live recordings featured on Endurance Soundly Caged prove that they can still engage with listeners on the most visceral of levels.

‘You Will Not Die’ finds Darren Hayman at his most withdrawn and introspective, uncovering new truths hidden in well-worn themes…when a songwriter of Hayman’s skill turns the spotlight back on himself – and in doing so creates a new world in miniature scale – it’s worth taking note.

Emboldened by the band’s incredible array of talent, The Magpie Arc’s Glamour In The Grey is an incredibly varied album which shows that there is nothing predictable or pedestrian about folk-rock. It’s a welcome shot in the arm and a wild ride.

We talk to those involved in Saltlines, a massive and ambitious project, that includes the author Raynor Winn, members of Gigspanner Big Band and Deborah Knight. The tour has a few days left and the accompanying double album is out now.

With A Tarot Of The Green Wood, Burd Ellen successfully tread entirely new ground. It is a suitably bewitching, disconcerting and often profoundly moving experience from the most innovative duo in folk music.

VRÏ’s ‘islais a genir’ is an album that honours variety and positively revels in its own complex, colourful identity, by turns thoughtful and celebratory. A formidable artistic and cultural statement.

Wyld Love Songs is more of a companion piece than a follow-up to David John Morris’s solo debut. It displays a sense of fun and freedom and the songs, show the generosity of the human spirit in all its humour, wisdom and sadness.

While ‘…And Take The Black Worm With Me’, the new solo album from One Leg One Eye (Ian Lynch of Lankum), is not for the faint of heart it is certainly worth taking the plunge: its immense depths are as emotional as they are musical and conceal a haunting beauty.

Saltlines is a massive, ambitious and highly unusual project; the fact that it feels perfectly judged at every moment is down to the sheer excellence of Gigspanner Big Band’s musicianship and the touching, clear-eyed nature of everything Raynor Winn writes or speaks. It is a constant delight. 

Impressively, with KIN, Sharron Kraus has managed to knit the two threads – seriousness and strangeness – together into one of the most rewarding, accomplished and unexpectedly moving albums of the year.

Pieces of Driftwood, despite or perhaps because of the varied origins of its songs, is a perfect introduction to Maxine Funke’s very special work. These are small glimpses into dreamworlds, always invisibly tethered to a uniquely described reality.

Erlend Apneseth’s Nova never shies away from the exploratory spirit that has defined his career. It is an album of colour and contrast, of human intimacy and wild natural grandeur.