Albums

Les Ailes may still be something of a new name on the scene, but with Tennessee she proves herself to be an accomplished and confident songwriter. A force to be reckoned with – a cool, chilled, and thoroughly dreamy listen.

Faeland’s second full-length outing builds on the promise of their 2018 debut, a FRUK album of that year. Chock full of joy, with abundant melodic hooks, coupled with the purity of Rebecca Nelson’s vocal, bedded within the sophisticated arrangements and backing of Jacob Morrison.

Mick O’Brien, Emer Mayock, Aoife Ní Bhriain return with a second recording of music collected by James Goodman. ‘More Tunes from the Goodman Manuscripts’ has the intimacy and warmth of a pub session.

Brian Finnegan’s ‘Hunger of the Skin’ is a beautiful collaborative creation, featuring top-class musicians and a rich blend of music and poetry…an album developed in the wee small hours of lockdown nights, we can all now enjoy the fruits of that journey.

Melodic, pensive, joyful, passionate, introspective, melancholic are all apposite descriptors of Glenaphuca. Underlying the whole album, and at its core throughout, are Lewis Barfoot’s undeniably beautiful, crystal-clear vocals, vocals that could melt the hearts of angels. More please.

Adam Douglas has successfully transformed his Norwegian wood into something imbued with the aural forces that emanate from the heart of Memphis. He has conjured the rudiments of American music and given them a new home.

While this may be Vivian Leva & Riley Calcagno’s first album together, it’s another contender for the year best-of lists…It may not stray far from well-trod musical and thematic pathways, but the duo walk them with affection for the footprints in which they step.

Linking to their last album, Edward II’s Dancing Tunes nods to the shared hardships of communities some 4000 miles apart but, more importantly, the resolve to dance through the bad times and soak up the sun when it shines. Kick-off your shoes and lively up your own dancehall days.

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings have long been established as immaculate interpreters of old-time acoustic folk and country and this is another outstanding addition to that catalogue.

The pictures on Reekinhame, the latest offering from the prolific Kitchen Cynics, are dark but there is a gentle humour that pervades all the songs, and a lightness of touch that endears you to them…Echoes of, The Incredible String Band, Ivor Cutler and Espers at their most genteel.

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.

Recorded over the course of a year in his Texas studio, Israel Nash’s ‘Topaz’ is a captivating album that runs the gamut from the personal to the political, the urgent to the dreamily laid back.