Albums

Although best known as a producer, Nigel Stonier also has a career as a reedy-voiced solo artist in his own right, Love and Work is his sixth studio album which features a number of guest musicians including Thea Gilmore on backing vocals.

The Ones You Keep Close is an entirely fitting companion to Brigid Mae Power’s earlier album – once you’ve fallen under her spell, it’s certainly one to keep close!

June Star return with their eleventh album ‘Sleeping With The Lights On’. A welcome chance to catch up, a compelling vision of where they are now and where they’re heading.

Daphne’s Flight return two decades after their impressive debut with Knows Time, Knows Change. Individually they are classy performers, together they are utterly sublime. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take quite so long before they take flight again.

The door is open for a new close harmony acoustic female folk duo to get their foot in the gap, and Exeter-based Sound of the Sirens, Abbe Martin and Hannah Wood, are decidedly in with a chance.

This is up there with the very best of homegrown Americana and, if they could get some sort of national radio or TV play to provide the incentive to gig beyond their London stomping grounds, they would deservedly develop the following they assuredly warrant.

Drawing on a mass of musical influences from North and South American pop and folk to Gypsy Jazz & classical music, Elias Krell’s ‘As Eli’ is unquestionably one of the summer’s brightest gems.

Heirlooms & Hearsay Nomad Songs is more than a collection of songs, it’s a recording of possibilities, a showcase for what Roxanne de Bastion’s voice is capable of as they dance between modern folk and a more rock-tinged sound.

William Matheny makes his debut with Strange Constellations, a solid collection of roots rock and countrified pop. Read our review and listen to his cover of Jason Molina’s ‘Just Be Simple’, a bonus track on the UK digital edition.

The beauty of ‘An Idea in Everything’ lies in its unhurried and profoundly mundane messages. Challenging art this album may be, but it is high and beautiful and superb, unlike anything I’ve ever heard. A very impressive achievement.

Isembard’s Wheel’s debut album ‘Common Ground’ offers more of the band’s wild, inventive, visionary “folk and then some”, which proves both highly infectious and highly irresistible.

Idaho’s Hillfolk Noir return with Junkerpunch, a ramshackle rural clatter that is given life by guitar, double bass, banjo and washboard. All beautifully recorded by analogue wizard Mike Coykendall at his Blue room Studio in Portland, Oregon.