Honest, in-depth album reviews by KLOF Mag – championing and curating intelligent, uncompromising voices in contemporary and experimental music since 2004.
Albums
by Danny Neill
In teasing all the juiciest ingredients from country, folk-troubadour and rockabilly, LaVere is arguably the most undiluted Americana artist as you could wish to find. Fifteen years into her recording career, she’s consistently proving to be one of the genres finest.
by Thomas Blake
Like Lisa O’Neill, Ye Vagabonds and Lankum, Varo share a deep understanding of traditional music, preserving the genre’s heritage with the need to create a form of music that is fresh and new. This accomplished debut should position them at the forefront of the scene.
by Bob Fish
While By Appointment Or Chance explains exactly how these songs came to Miranda Mulholland, in the end, our gratitude has to go out to a cat which brought Miranda back to the peaceful landscape of Twyford where this distinguished album was recorded.
by Mike Davies
On album closer ‘I Love You’ he says “you don’t need to pretend you’re anything more than you are” – a simple, open, intimate, honest and hugely listenable album, Sam Lewis sums up those sentiments up perfectly.
by Mike Davies
John Moreland’s ‘LP5’ is a terrific piece of work that is his most musically complex and lyrically personal album to date, it confirms his position as one of today’s great singer-songwriters.
by Dave McNally
With a bonus opening by Smith and McClennan, Dirk Powell’s album launch at Celtic Connections had a warm informal back-porch feel, as if Dirk and his transatlantic band were playing as much for their own fun as for ours.
by Mike Davies
Following an award-winning year as one half of The LYNNeS alongside fellow Canadian Lynn Miles, Lynne Hanson returns to her solo career path for her seventh album of variegated Americana. This album isn’t just words, it speaks from the heart and soul and it will touch yours.
by Bob Fish
It takes a certain amount of guts to open a folk album with 30 seconds of string quartet music. After that, you have to deliver the goods, which Ned Roberts does in spades on Dream Sweetheart.
by Mike Davies
Half Moon Light finds The Lone Bellow returning full of ambition with what is, without a doubt, their best and most musically sophisticated work to date.
by Bob Fish
As the Lost Brothers, Oisin Leech and Mark McCausland have created a disc that subtly shifts moods while creating a framework as comfortable as their Irish hometowns of Navan and Omagh. Their most mature and satisfying works to date.
by Mike Davies
McCambridge has cultivated a distinctive musical arboretum within which the emotional panorama and insightful perspective afforded by A Northern View has resulted in a powerful and compelling album, as well as one of the best musical responses to Brexit to date.