Albums

Nick Jonah Davis’s “Rose Delta Rising,” recorded at Black Bay Studio in the Outer Hebrides, pairs electric guitar with Neal Heppleston’s bass, Joe Danks’ drums and Richard Birkin’s strings. This is a very elegant and accomplished set that feels like a distillation of Nick’s work over the years. Musically adventurous, impeccably recorded and performed, it is his best expression yet. Includes the premiere of the “Spoonbill” video.

Patrick ‘Paahto’ Cummins and John Francis Flynn’s debut as Paahto & The Bull, “The 123”, is a guitar duet recording rooted in the Irish traditional canon. No banjo, no fiddle, no percussion — just a fresh, wood-sounding warmth and accomplished playing across ten tracks. A tremendous debut that oozes confidence. This music is in very safe hands.

Laura Veirs’ “Temple Songs” is a set of songs that are personal and immediate, crafted alone in a backyard studio with two microphones and a laptop. Veirs embraces wabi-sabi, welcoming imperfection and the environment seeping into takes. At 29 minutes and 11 songs, so many multitudes are contained within — a recording that chooses truth over gloss.

“Porchlight” is Two Runner’s first album with Paige Anderson as sole frontperson. Its twelve songs encompass transition, loss and journeys both literal and personal. Quality story songs are matched by the beautiful yearning of more intimate numbers — a fine record from a performer with burgeoning talent and an even more promising future.

“Donn Dubh” is a challenging and exhilarating reimagining of Scots Gaelic traditions by two fearless musical cosmonauts at the top of their game. Arun Sood and Angeline Morrison’s collaborative debut calls to mind Eno and Byrne’s “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” — samples, distortion and elegiac piano channelling folk’s ancient past while forecasting its glittering future.

Spell Songs’ third studio album, In Thin Air, is a creative reaction to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s The Book of Birds. Fifteen songs deal with different aspects of avian life, from nest-building to migration, building up a noticeable narrative thrust. Again and again, this album cleverly conflates the lives of birds with human experience. It is an album in constant fluttering movement, one that soars and sings.

On “Black Duck with Elena Setién,” Chicago’s experimental trio team up with Spanish-Basque singer and multi-instrumentalist Elena Setién, recording after just a few hours of rehearsal to capture the direct energy of their live shows. The music shifts from tightly composed to improvised — exciting, adventurous, and full of character. A joy to listen to.

Captured live over a Valentine’s Day weekend in Los Angeles, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “Ghosts of American Psychonauts” finds familiar songs dismantled and rearranged by an expanded band. The great trapeze artist of the human experience has eviscerated and recapitulated his own songbook once more — a compelling addition to an ongoing project of self-actualisation.

Hollow Hand deliver a fully harmonious union of folk and indie pop on ‘Wish Road South’, their best album to date. It’s a vibrant record in which you can feel the fun coursing through it, as the zest of a reconfigured and tightly knit group of musicians burns as brightly as the beautifully melodic and unique songs that they’ve forged here.

Marvin Tate’s “Controlled Burn” is a hallucinogenic portal into a world that’s similar to ours, but the furniture is rearranged. Recorded as duo improvisations with longtime collaborator Leroy Bach, then remodelled and refined into the tightest 12 tracks, the method is brave, and the results speak of the angelic geometry of the universe within.

Alex Dupree’s “Talking to the Dog” is outsider-folk made with a completely unique eye for lyrical detail. Dupree moves between country twang, cosmic psychedelia and soulful confession with the ease of a picaresque poet-jester-troubadour. You could pick any couplet and it would stand against the best lyric writing of the last sixty years. Let’s hope he finally gets the credit he deserves.

Elanor Moss’s debut “The Knife, The Needle” balances a quiet, subtle mode of expression with a searing intensity of feeling. Arrangements create an all-enveloping sound in which the little lyrical razor blades are skilfully hidden. There is nothing loose or mild about her artistry. She is in full control of every moment, exposing the soft tissue of human emotion with unerring accuracy.