Albums

Rob captures in words and images a captivating set and a fantastic evening of acoustic music at Kenilworth Arts Festival featuring Rachel Sermanni, Luke Jackson and Kitty Macfarlane.

Paul Goodwin’s latest offering is a quietly unassuming album, but it creeps up on you and hits you in the solar plexus of your mid-life crisis, leaving you winded, but grateful to be still breathing.

As the title suggests, the component parts form together to create a superbly wrought and finely crafted album, beautifully played by all involved, that is certain to loom large in the end of year folk awards.

That Flemons and Simpson are able to rework and revive the tensions and turmoils that fester in blues and folk music is the deepest tribute a musician can pay to their forebears, as well as the only way to bring those ghosts back to life.

Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Apple Of My Eye are happily lacking in any such weak links, and as a result, they have produced one of the most exciting folk albums of the year so far.

Common wisdom holds that The Handsome Family’s finest album is ‘Through The Trees’. It may be time to revise that after a listen to ‘Unseen’, an album that embraces forgotten moments, lost dreams and spiritual light.

Johnny shares some his favourite moments from Fairport’s Cropredy Convention this year including Steeleye Span, Gryphon, Ralph McTell, Demon Barbers, Brìghde Chaimbeul and many more…not forgetting Fairport Convention themselves of course.

A unique and enthralling project that celebrates the power of collaboration, a shared love of traditional music and The Shee’s ten years as a major force in folk music. The premiere of Continuum at Celtic Connections was an unforgettable event, the album that’s grown from it is simply outstanding.

David Eugene Edwards gazes skywards in his latest offering. Ethereal and multi-layered ‘Star Treatment’ is a blood rush of  baptismal fury that touches on primal, apocalyptic feelings and leaves you both drained and exhilarated.

Solarference have intuitively constructed a thorny and challenging set of pieces that amply repays any measure of the effort expended in getting to know their music. The ghosts of the past continue to inform the present, which in turn haunts the future.

One of the highlights of this year’s FolkEast Festival was Ushers Island whose lineup reads like an Irish traditional music hall of fame: Andy Irvine, Dónal Lunny, Paddy Glackin, Michael McGoldrick and John Doyle.

Brimming with delicate individuality Lucy Roleff’s songs are intimate and carefully considered jewel-like creations that are pitched somewhere between hauntingly intense and beautifully serene.