Albums

With a focus on the vivacity and legacy of the Shetland tradition, Atlaness is a handsome, and thoroughly delightful listen on which Gray proves to be a talented fiddler, composer, and arranger in her own right.

Brinkworth’s sophomore record touches on different themes that come with staying put – the songs fit around their creator like a second skin, and he delivers them with a natural ease that comes only from artists that have honed their craft through experience.

“The Lost Mystique of Being in the Know” is a surprise release from Rising Appalachia that finds them at their most improvisational – one of the most intoxicating musical experiences you’ll have this year.

Watch part one of a short film on the making of Ulster trio TRÚ’s debut album ‘No Fixed Abode’. It also features Tommy Sands performing ‘County Down’ which TRÚ cover in their own unique and magical way.

Staran is both an album and the name adopted by a new collective formed by five of the most exciting young talents on the Glasgow folk scene. It’s a gem and an album truly more than the sum of its parts.

Mind Maintenance is less about its individual tracks as it is about being a continual, looping listening experience. There is something wholly magnetising about this rare music and its insistently repetitive nature that is hard to switch from. Enchanting, exciting, beautifully performed music.

There’s a rugged beauty to Elephant Micah’s Vague Tidings that reflects the Alaskan wilderness…something that not only reflects the northern locale, but the people populating it.

While David John Morris’s lyrics have always flowed from a deeply spiritual place, they have never sounded quite like those on ‘Monastic Love Songs’…they stir with transformative promise with the constitution of his inner country, as Cohen would say, vividly evoking his natural surroundings.

Johanna Samuels’ ‘Excelsior!’ really comes into its own through the honesty with which she discusses isolation and vulnerability. While musically, she’s not attempting to break new ground she may help accomplish something far greater: a kinder world with more compassionate songwriting.

TRÚ are no ordinary folk band, and No Fixed Abode no ordinary album. Their music is dusted with a hint of magic and while it has all the energy befitting a first offering, it bears the stamp of quality usually reserved for seasoned artists.

In short, a poet-troubadour with a conscience who’s an uplifting panacea for times clearly manifesting malady above the shoulders too. Remedies are unavailable, but certainly an equivalent musical vaccination.

There is so much more to be found throughout Axacan, but the overall result is a sprawling, painstakingly created record by a progressive artist that will take many listens to fully digest. Axacan is Daniel Bachman’s most accomplished work yet.