Albums

Swedish singer and musician Sara Parkman’s fourth solo album Aster, atlas tackles the biggest themes: life, death, faith, grief, and the passage of time. From its opening few seconds, it is uncanny and darkly magical. Parkman has given us something precious and gutsy, an album that, like the gardens that inspired it, has its own inscrutable rhythms of growth and decay.

Long Wave Home masterfully pairs the voice of Jesca Hoop, sounding like the calmest of seas, with a diverse, textural approach to her arrangements that sparkle like a coral reef, hiding multitudes below the surface.

Following years of IVF and an on-stage miscarriage, Abigail Lapell was pregnant with her first child when she made her album Shadow Child. Nine of the songs represent a month of gestation, embracing moments of joy and loss, and addressing issues such as reproductive health. Sweet and tender, the album is tinged with sadness but comes to full term with hope and joy.

Originally released in 2008 and now reissued with two bonus covers, Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee — the quartet of Darren Hayman, David Watkins, Dan Mayfield and David Tattersall — is an absolute joy to rediscover. East London bluegrass played with close-knit, co-operative DIY warmth: witty, lovelorn originals and artfully chosen covers. Think The Basement Tapes with more banjos.

Maisy Owen’s debut Dark On A Sunny Day is a singer-songwriter album that, for a first attempt, shows remarkable maturity and a kind of timelessness in her style. Even when stripped down to the bare bones of voice and guitar, it still has enough detail to hold its spell. Maisy Owen sounds like she has a fascinating journey ahead.

White Fence’s Orange, out now via Drag City, is Tim Presley’s first album in seven years — and it sounds freer and more expansive than ever. With Ty Segall again in the producer’s chair, these songs are built for electricity, celebrating melody whilst unafraid to show hurt, fear, and despair. There is an audible joy in the playing.

Yorkshire-based folksinger and guitarist Chris Brain’s fourth album, Red Sun Rising, replaces the wide optimism of last year’s ‘New Light’ with a sense of knowing, yet still manages to focus on the brightness of life and the idea of new beginnings. Adept fingerpicking, considered guest musicians, a philosophical focus on finding beauty in the now — Chris just keeps getting better.

Of all the artists that emerged from the freak folk/New Weird America boom of the early noughties, Josephine Foster is one of the most enduring, and certainly one of the most interesting. On her new album Adormidera, she and Víctor Herrero have created, through a kind of alchemy, an artefact that seems to grow more beautiful with every listen.

Blood Sucking Maniacs, the self-titled debut from Terry Allen’s multigenerational family band, is out now on Paradise of Bachelors. Spanning five generations and 121 years across twenty-two tracks, it folds in Jo Harvey Allen, sons, grandsons, Panhandle Mystery Band stalwarts and a barrelhouse-piano-playing matriarch captured on seventies cassette. Free, wild, tender, and gloriously unruly — Americana cross-pollinated across the ages.

On Emily Portman’s fourth solo album, she weaves a tapestry of complex lyrical themes and intricate musical arrangements. Of all the singers and songwriters in British folk music, few have the ability to encapsulate what it means to be human in the way that Portman does. “Dominion of Spells” is a real and vital piece of work, something to be cherished.

Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane, Mark Nelson’s latest solo album as Pan•American, plays out like the sensation of crossing cities in a little aeroplane — each track feels like its own journey to a nameless destination, but looking out the window, there is a sense of safety, comfort, and calm. A mesmerising body of work ruminating deep from within.

On Old Spot (II), fiddle player Rowan Piggott and banjoist Joe Danks continue exploring American Old-time traditions with a discernible difference in the sound — a suggestion of minimalism around some songs, and a precise nature to the playing. The duo’s second album is a significant leap forward — a very accomplished set from two players who clearly love their craft.