Thomas Blake

Featuring a host of artists from Second Language, Drifts & Flurries is a sonically varied but thematically coherent album which at every turn is ambitious and surprising, always in tune with the wintry landscape but also with the interior landscapes of the human mind, which can be just as cold and just as beautiful.

Cedars is a beguiling and quietly astonishing piece of work, where Stuart Hyatt’s overarching vision finds its perfect counterweight in an immensely talented and varied array of musicians.

The Magpie Arc’s EP3 is a fitting way to cap a set of EPs whose very existence seems to celebrate the lasting power of musical collaboration at a time when it feels most at threat. It’s just as accomplished as its predecessors, and even more full of musical surprises.

That combination of closeness and mystery – a thread that runs through all of his records – is one of the reasons Yorkston is amongst the very best songwriters of his generation; The Wide, Wide River is yet another career highlight.

Frankie Armstrong’s all-encompassing, compassionate worldview has served her well for over half a century, and Cats Of Coven Lawn is one of her strongest statements yet. It is also a brilliant testament to the essential nature of artistic expression.

Thomas Blake shares his Top 10 Albums of 2020 featuring Bill Callahan, Shirley Collins, Burd Ellen, The Silver Field, Herman Dune, Stella Sommer, Stick in the Wheel, Cunning Folk, Brigid Mae Power & The Rheingans Sisters.

While EP2 owes more to American Roots than EP1, when the musicians are as good as this, the influences matter less than the intimacy of the playing. This is a group of musicians playing the music that they love, and doing it better than just about anyone else.

Henry Martin, the latest offering from Edgelarks (Hannah Martin and Phillip Henry) is an album filled with positivity – resolutely optimistic, brilliantly played and a joy from start to finish.

The power of A Casual Invocation comes from its mystery: it feels at once ancient & modern. Folk music at its most transcendent, an antidote to the banal and a gateway to the weird.

David Ivar has made a record that sounds on first listen like it could have been recorded at any point in the last fifty years, but in reality is uniquely and intelligently current, an album of the year in every sense.

Stella Sommer’s ‘Northern Dancer’ is a stunning piece of work, full of hush and swell, profoundly evocative and brilliantly, lovingly composed.

Their previous release was one of the most innovative folk albums of the last decade, and on Receiver they up their game even further. The Rheingans Sisters have created a masterpiece of modern folk music as well as a captivating physical artefact.