Albums

The latest release from The Wailin’ Jennys is a beautiful new collection of covers. An album of great tunes, re-arranged by a seasoned trio who know how to bring out the best in a song. It grows on you, song by song. We wholly recommend a listen!

Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy make a masterful pair and blend the perfect concoction of protest and memory. Like living history, If All I Was Was Black is a sweet sojourn towards a collective truth and an earthy ode to the rhythm of rebellion.

Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards are a class act and a musical force of nature. California Calling is an atmospheric album packed with gems, a splendid showcase for a close-knit group of creative musicians in their prime.

Topette!!’s debut album C’est Le Pompon is one that should be on all your radars. It’s all here, beautifully whipped up and raring to go – a wonderful melange of French, English, and all points East, West, North and South.

The beauty and importance of this album lies partly in the fact that O’Hooley and Tidow recognise that an appreciation of this time of year – whether you want to call it Christmastime or not – is based on both personal and universal factors. This is an album of frosted beauty with a heart as warm as a coal fire.

The Burning Hell’s ‘Revival Beach’ is about the end of everything. But it is no less wise, funny or musically assured than its predecessor Public Library (easily one of the best records of 2016). Kom’s writing is a breath of fresh air, and I can think of few songwriters I’d rather spend the apocalypse with.

Some outstanding young musicians have emerged from the Dublin folk scene over the last couple of years and this second album from The Jeremiahs shows they’ve earned their place alongside the likes of Lankum and Daoiri Farrell.

On Laissez Passer, TootArd, a young, trailblazing band from the Golan Heights, show that the direst of circumstances can produce inspiring and uplifting music that will open up your mind and make you move your feet.

As he so ably demonstrates on ‘Carry Fire’, Robert Plant is a musical traveller, still on the journey stopping off where the music takes him. With American blues still at the core, the music also spans the continents taking in Africa, Asia and European themes. Long may the fire he carries burn ever brighter…

The latest offering from Don Merckle offers a short but highly effective and, for many, resonant portrait of the experiences and feelings of those called to do their duty and for whom war seemed to offer the only escape from hard times.

The Melrose Quartet embody the kind of collaborative spirit and socially aware stance that makes folk music such an interesting, challenging and continually relevant form. As demonstrated on Dominion, they have prospered by seizing the day, by daring to do things that are slightly different…who are able to make old songs sound new, and new ones sound timeless.

LOWP are a folk band from the North East of England, formed in late 2009. Their music is drawn from Tyneside, Durham and Northumberland, and has a quality that is unique to that area, a meeting of Scottish and English but suffused with its own vitality and its distinctive accents.