Thomas Blake

On Navarasa, Yorkston/Thorne/Khan achieve a kind of serenity that is certainly spiritual but is somehow completely secular and entirely inclusive. Its influences are clearly visible, but the way those influences are put together creates a kind of music that is original, exciting and wholly unique.

Folk Radio’s Thomas Blake shares his Top 10 albums of 2019 including Richard Dawson, Bill Callahan, Brìghde Chaimbeul, C Joynes, House And Land, Alex Rex and more.

For all its range and variation, for all the subtle and beautiful musical flourishes and lingering sonic effects, The Victorians is essentially a call to arms. Harp & a Monkey have made a stunning album that pleads the case for folk song as a working-class mode of expression.

All three songs have that timeless quality. Listened to out of context it would be difficult to tell the ancient from the modern. This is an important feature of O’Neill’s gifts as a singer and musician.

We catch up with Jon Boden, our Artist of the Month, to talk about his new album ‘Rose in June’, a stand-alone work that ranks among the most accomplished, passionate and polished of his releases to date.

An album full of human warmth, but also tinged with wildness. This is the sign of a master musician at work, and Hay certainly fits that description. It is only two years since his debut and he is already one of the finest guitarists of his generation.

Rose in June is an endlessly varied and accomplished album that sees the Remnant Kings at the top of their game and shows just why Jon Boden is one of the most lauded folk musicians this century.

Catherine Rudie’s ability to create vivid moods from often sparse ingredients is a rare gift – she can make you feel as if you inhabit the dream-spaces of these songs, and then return you to the real world with a bump.

They can be cosmopolitan in one breath, ethereal in the next. Their songs can be sad and yearning or darkly humorous. Their arrangements can sound, almost at once, ancient and startlingly contemporary. The rapid evolution of Bird In The Belly into one of our finest folk acts is a joy to behold.

We chat to Luke Daniels, our current Artist of the Month, about his new album “Old Friends & Exhausted Enemies”. Daniels is one of folk music’s true originals. Whatever he plans to do next is unlikely to be quite like anything else.

Richard Dawson’s ‘2020’ is a sincere appeal to optimism, and above all else, sincerity is Dawson’s calling card. This is art shorn of artifice, pop against populism, and it just so happens to be one of the defining statements of our times.

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Thomas Bartlett have created an album that is seductively dreamlike but sometimes sad, layered like a palimpsest but accessible on every one of those layers. It is unlikely you will hear a better instrumental album this year.