Albums

Saskia’s latest offering ‘Are You Listening’ is a sublime and reflective album that will mesmerize the listener, and is always underpinned with optimism and hope for the future.

For their debut, The Magpies have produced an album that intrigues and delights, packed with variety and first-class musicianship. Not to be missed.

Bitter Better is a glorious, widescreen recording that is full of life. Even when contemplating its ups and downs, there’s an energy and vitality to the work.

Every new Blue Rose Code album has been a progression from the last, and ‘With Healings Of The Deepest Kind’ is no different. It should be on everybody’s end-of-year list.

The Devil Laughs is a mini-masterpiece. Rejoice in the fact that music of this magnitude is finally being released to a world that has never needed it more.

Slither, Soar and Disappear is a triumph of considered, elegant playing and arranging, working on many levels to create something far more than the sum of its parts.

One Town Over makes you connect with that it means to be human, to have friends, lovers, children, dreams and a heart that can beat as well as be bruised.

While it contrasts Merry Hell’s more rousing, crowd singalong material, it is no less fuelled by the same heart and humanity and equally warrants a place in your collection.

In its journey from wreckage to rebirth, it reaches deep into what Yeats termed the rag and bone shop of the heart, and finds treasure within. One of her best.

Bells in the Ruins is a collection that requires both care and consideration. While the thorns outnumber the roses, both are necessary, one cannot exist without the other.

Playing on your expectations, Z Berg paints a series of pastels and watercolours that form a new vision of how to engage with your surroundings.

If Rory Butler keeps up the sort of quality evidenced here, he’ll not be looking back on a career where anything was wasted. Go and buy it.