Albums

Dancing the Line is such a confident collection of songs; you can feel the ideas brimming in every sweep of Ultan O’Brien’s bow. Nothing is overdone or superfluous here; it is music in its purest state. I love it.

In the hands of Jonathan Nangle and the Crash Ensemble, something beautiful has emerged from the long gestation of ‘Blue Haze of Deep Time’, which should become a touchstone of the ‘slow music’ movement.

Folklore Tapes deliver one of the strongest and strangest in their Ceremonial County series. The Bohman Brothers provide the perfect primer for creating weird, place-specific atmospheres, while Jennifer Reid represents folk music as a living tradition, as entertaining as it is political.

New Thing, the scarily accomplished debut album from Avery Friedman, inhabits a complex emotional realm where nervousness can coexist with (and inform) ideas of sexiness, sadness, tenderness. Her world is fragile but appears to have arrived fully-formed.

Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is proof that you don’t have to forsake traditional aesthetic notions of melody to make something experimental…this is music deep and alluring enough to get lost in and sparse enough to find yourself in. 

Alabaster DePlume’s new LP, A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, is both a soother, a coping mechanism and a healer. This one might be the State of the Nation address that truly resonates.

It is still early days for nominating a “best debut album of year”, but Kin’Gongolo Kiniata’s debut album ‘Kiniata’ which successfully ploughs a bold new furrow through the world of Congolese music and beyond, will surely be up there in the mix.

Macie Stewart’s ‘When the Distance is Blue’ feels even more cerebral than her debut, more improvisational, and more rooted in landscape. But for all the meditativeness and all the improvisation, there is a single-minded artistry at work behind these pieces. 

With Te Whare Tīwekaweka, Marlon Williams turns to the Māori tongue of his ancestors for inspiration. In nurturing his cultural and spiritual ties, Williams has found a way into his most expansive and majestic album yet.

Delivered with eloquence, fire and an impressive eye for poetic detail, Lonnie Holley’s ‘Tonky’ is a work of multitudes. It follows unlikely trails, expands on themes other artists would pass over, and invites a depth of thought and engagement rarely found in contemporary music.

Musically, lyrically and thematically, a fire rages through the Brown Horse’s sophomore album, All The Right Weaknesses. It’s a stupendous follow-up that should see it easily featured on many year-end best-of lists.

With lightness and an ear for a concise and cutting phrase, Clara Mann alchemises her experience into a universal emotional reaction on ‘Rift’. In the space of a debut, she has gone from ‘one to watch’ to one of the best songwriters in the country.