Albums

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.

A shift to more introspective material merely confirms not only his latent talent but also that, with Notes From An Island, his journey as one of our foremost singer-songwriters continues to be in the ascendancy. His most accomplished album so far.

It’s no great stretch to say that Anne Briggs is our greatest folk singer, and if this new release brings her incomparable talent to a wider audience, then it will be the least she deserves. 

III is a folk album played with the inventiveness of jazz and the control of chamber music. It is suffused with pastoral light but anchored in earthy realism, unshowy but technically innovative, driven by emotion but never sentimental.

One might assume the lyrics alone would be the highlight on this release, and they are indeed touching. However, the performances are equally impressive – each contributor clearly understood the gravity of these words and put forward a special effort.

Recorded against the backdrop of division brought out about by the Trump election Birds of Chicago deliver an album of positivity: “We want to give people some good news, and we want them to be able to dance when they hear it.” Consider both boxes duly ticked.

Senyawa take on the role of outsiders. Their music is a constant series of volte-faces against what is predictable or what is considered normal. Or rather, they distill the weirdness, the wonderful crookedness, inherent in what passes for normality in a fast-moving and hugely diverse culture.