Albums

Mad Martins a genuinely stimulating cultural artefact, born of an inspired collaboration of like-minded creative artists. It depicts the lives of the three Martin brothers, born in the late18th century in the South Tyne area of Northumberland.

We decide that sticking ‘Songs of the Hollow’, the new album from Irish band cua, into a genre would be pointless and instead sit back and enjoy an album of variety and of voices, of echoes and of influences, and of emotions and passions.

Almost four years since the release of their debut album, the Glasgow sextet, James Edwyn & The Borrowed Band, return with a solid and harder-edged set of guitar-driven alt-country.

Avenging & Bright, a crossover between folk, pop and electronica, is bursting with confidence, and rightly so. Once again Damien O’Kane has recorded an album so highly polished it shines, it dazzles. Read our review and watch his new video for Poor Stranger.

Down to the Sea is a 4-track EP of covers from blues and roots duo Ma Polaine’s Great Decline, available with pre-orders of their forthcoming album. They are all great tracks and in one instance, trumps the original in spades.

Ralph McTell & Wizz Jones return with ‘About Time Too’, an extension of last year’s ‘About Time’ and very much cut from the same cloth. Throughout, it sounds like they’re playing for fun, nothing is too perfect or polished – one of the album’s key strengths. Lovely stuff.

Chris Stapleton’s ‘From A Room: Volume 1’ has just recently walked away with the CMA Best Album award. Based on the strength of Volume 2, they might as well start engraving that 2018 Album of the Year award now.

At a special performance at The White Room, Nanaimo, BC, Canada, Roberts Hall elected to perform their new album ‘2016’ in its entirety, in the round, with an expanded line-up. Our BC-based reviewer, David Morrison was there to witness it unfold.

Black Light Theatre is a guitar-driven, neo-psychedelic smorgasbord of sound and texture showcasing Jack Cheshire’s introspective songwriting, his solid Television-inspired guitar work and his band’s mastery of dynamics and tight musicianship.

Blessed with a peerless voice, possessed of a remarkable talent for arranging both contemporary and traditional song, and surrounded by musicians of the highest calibre, with Angels & Men, Kate Rusby offers the very best musical backdrop anyone could hope for this Christmas.

Cape Snow’s magnetism is as much in their humanity and warmth as in their stateliness and detachment; in fact, it is the tension between these two elements that give The Last Of The Light its immense and ambiguous appeal. An inspired collaboration.

Providing more energy than a tanker full of Lucozade, 25 years on the Peatbog Faeries sound every bit as fresh and, above all, enthusiastic as they did when they headed out from Skye all those years ago. Live@25 is an exceptional live album by an exceptional live band.