Albums

Gretchen Peters has reacted to the adoring reception of Blackbirds by writing an even better album in Dancing with the Beast. This is assured, highly impressive work from all involved.

The range of musical genres covered, along with the technical prowess of the playing results in an album that is constantly riveting and fits a lot of beautiful music from six years’ of recording sessions, into thirty-nine minutes, without the suggestion of a seam. Highly recommended.

While certainly being the most challenging of Ryley Walker’s albums so far, with music this heady and contemporary blending to make something so cohesive and exciting, Ryley’s ‘Southside Chicago’ album is also arguably his best yet.

Will Pound’s enormous enthusiasm for traditional dance has enticed the very best into this project. Through The Seasons will open many people’s eyes to the power of traditional English dance music.

Arrow is an album of maturity, self-realisation and integrity. It is the album Ciara O’Neill had to make and without any ulterior motive or compromise. Most of all though, it is so musical! Ciara and her songs carry everything with such conviction, it makes her almost transparent.

“as tiny as the venue and invited audience were, if the significance of the event we’d gathered to witness was mirrored metaphorically, there’d have been thousands of us assembled somewhere like Madison Square Garden.”

An album best heard in those tranquil twilight or early dawn moments when the consciousness floats free and the air takes on a beguiling luminescence, it seeps over you like warm water opening your pores.

A consummate artistic triumph that marks a new phase in McQuaid’s career – a mature and hugely confident musical and stylistic progression that deserves to be applauded as such.

An Abandoned Orchid House is a much deeper and richer album than considered at first listening. It is full of personal loss, searching and eventual recognition, survival and even revelation.

It has been ten years since his last excursion into the acoustic world of the singer-songwriter; on the strength of his latest album let’s hope that the gap is very much reduced.

Peter shares his highlights of the first ever Walton Folk Festival, a sold-out event with afternoon and evening sessions and a lineup of acts that could grace established folk festivals many times its size.

The big-voiced Belfast-based singer-songwriter Matt McGinn returns with his third studio album ‘The End of the Common Man’, his strongest and most confident step forward to date.