Albums

By no means overshadowing Blue Lake’s previous album, Weft, The Animal instead provides further proof of Jason Dungan’s ambition and ability as a musician and now bandleader. A record celebrating human collaboration and the beauty of life and nature, The Animal sees Blue Lake push its sound into new realms, once again surprising and delighting—a wonderful, uplifting instrumental album.

Bergamo-based guitarist Buck Curran’s Far Driven Sun is an intensely musical, layered set celebrating his reunion with a 1990 Stefan Sobell ‘Butterfly’ acoustic guitar. From the intimate “Vignettes” to the subtly dynamic “Bells” and the buoyant “Unicorn Song,” it showcases Buck’s exquisite touch as a player and recording artist. It’s a highly accomplished album, made with love and performed with the utmost skill and intricate musicianship.

Mason Lindahl’s meticulous dual-release presents a captivating study of ambient texture and place. Recorded in California (Joshua) and Iceland (Same Day Walking), the albums’ distinct sonic palettes—one “woolier and warmer,” the other starker—are inseparable from their locales. Lindahl’s singular nylon string guitar style, with its complex picking and judicious synth/organ touches, finds both intimacy and an otherworldly feel in an album of outstanding guitar music.

Joan Shelley’s new album, ‘Real Warmth,’ is an intimate and urgent collection of songs. With a unique, collaborative sound, the music explores profound themes of human connection, global divisions, and our fragile planet. It’s a beautiful example of American folk that stands as the finest offering from her esteemed career so far.

Katie Spencer is the perfect case study of an artist’s maturation. Her journey from the acclaimed debut ‘Weather Beaten’ to her stunning latest album, What Love Is, is a testament to her growth. This album sees her pushing boundaries, inviting listeners into intimate spaces, and exploring love in its many forms. It’s a mature, confident release that affirms her status as an artist deserving of the broadest exposure and audience.

Michael Hurley’s final album, Broken Homes and Gardens, finds him essential form: digressive, surreal, jokey, ultimately moving. A folk prankster with a poet’s soul. A fitting way to cap a thirty-odd album legacy that is as important as practically any songwriter you care to mention. He sounds like he had a whole lot more up his sleeve. He always did. 

John Elliott of The Little Unsaid has a way of drawing listeners in with universal truths presented in the most personal – and often poetic – of ways. On Stay Fragile All Across This Cold Frontier, the album moves from intimate piano ballads to raw blues-rock and stately meditations, confirming The Little Unsaid as one of the best-kept secrets in contemporary music.

M. Sage’s Tender / Wading is a quietly sublime album. It achieves all of the goals of ambient music without being hamstrung by any of its genre tropes. Unafraid to reach into the past, and unafraid of its own big heart, it is textural, varied, consistently interesting and frequently moving.  

On ‘Forgetting Is Violent’, Patrick Shiroishi tackles racism at large, both in the past and from a contemporary standpoint. That his work carries such depth of meaning, even at its most minimal, is a testament to his skill as a composer and musician, but also listener and interpreter of stories. The album is a lightning rod for those stories, a vivid warning from history and a vibrant cri de coeur.

Mystery Park is Kathryn Williams’s 15th studio album and, arguably, her most open and tender in its emotions, delivery and words. René Magritte once said, “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist”. Williams makes it a walk in the park.

On Baby Man, the latest offering from Fruit Bats, Eric D Johnson strips away the comfort of a full band, forcing a singular focus on his lyrical and melodic introspection, a choice that elevates this album. It stands as an intimate and essential document of an artist reckoning with his past and present, a beautiful and poignant act of vulnerability that ultimately reveals a deep and resonant strength.

The key ingredient of “A Danger to Ourselves” is depth. It is an album of unfathomable musical depths, but perhaps more importantly, it is an album about depth of feeling, the abyss from which desire springs like a liquid flame. Lucrecia Dalt gives herself over completely to exploring this depth, and the singular work of art that emerges is as detailed and as unexpected as any treasure.