Thomas Blake

Cocos Lovers release their third album this month. Gold Or Dust continues their melodic poise and rootsy musicianship, a wonderful album.

Three years have passed since Ruth Theodore’s second album, with Dear Lamp Love Moth she has followed it up with a set of songs that is even more ambitious.

David Grubbs has the intellect, talent, and bullish presence to make north-east London’s post-hipsters quake in their hi-tops. He is joined on stage at Café Oto by Italian pair Andrea Belfi and Stefano Pilia.

Field Report has been several years in the making, and musically it shows. Old and new meet in carefully considered swirls of pedal steel, acoustic guitar and judiciously deployed synths.

This interview has been updated as a feature via our Substack: ‘It’s Up To Emma’ was Scout Niblett’s final album and is all about departure, cutting free – sometimes violently – and starting again, albeit with a bitter residue.

Spectral Dusk is the latest release from Evening Hymns, an album on which coldness and warmth coexist, and which charts a period of difficult emotional catharsis without ever being dreary or cloying.

The Weighing of the Heart is Colleen’s first studio album in six years which has arrived with sudden, gentle surprise, like a migrating bird that has appeared too early. It is a gleaming treasure.

The Tortoise is a mightily impressive first release, full of sadness and surprise, and introduces a spirited new voice. Despite the melancholy, good times beckon for Nuala Honan.

The latest offering from Bait, Gastr Del Sol and Bastro guitarist David Grubbs is ‘The Plain Where the Palace Stood’. An album that is equal parts brainy, bonkers and bewildering, but never anything less than rewarding.

Cam Penner’s latest album ‘To Build a Fire’ is at its heart a good old-fashioned country rock album. It manages to avoid the clichés of the genre with some excellent song writing, an honest, wide-eyed worldview and some very genuine emotional clout.

Folk Radio UK had the rare opportunity of catching Alasdair Roberts & Friends live at The Lexington last week featuring the talented line-up from his latest release A Wonder Working Stone.

On Blue Rose Code’s debut album ‘North Ten’ is shot through with an overriding sense of calm in which travel and rootlessness are abiding themes whose heart – as Bob Dylan would say – is in the Highlands.