Albums

★★★★ Anoushka Shankar’s latest release, Traveller, is a musical odyssey charting the gypsies journey from their homeland in Rajasthan to their final settlement in Spain.

The film soundtrack ‘O Brother, Where art Thou’ celebrates its 10th anniversary with the release of a deluxe edition. Read our review and listen to the ‘Making of’ Documentary.

★★★ Californian duo Button Willow Locomotive combine a random sounding band name with some smart songwriting on their debut LP, Eight Tracks.

Melanie heads to the Slaughtered Lamb to catch Canada’s ‘Wilderness of Manitoba’ who put on a great show!

★★★★ London sextet Bleeding Heart Narrative are set to release their first EP ‘Bison’ with Brainlove Records. Read our review.

Joseph Topping calls into the award winning Glenfarg Village Folk Club for a solo performance.

★★★ Tiny Ruin’s debut album, Some Were Meant for Sea, paints tender and quaint stories of fictitious, perhaps allegorical figures that are as vivid as the climes in which they are placed.

★★★ Maria Taylor’s fourth solo release, Overlook, fixes itself firmly in a familiar location, embodying a sound created with a closeknit set of musicians plucked from Taylor’s close friends and family.

★★★★ Dark Nights Make for Brighter Days is the debut album Scottish singer-songwriter Samantha Whates. As the title suggests, a record of contrasts and contradictions.

★★★ Paul Hiraga’s Downpilot latest release, New Great Lakes, was recorded in the woodland setting of Seattle’s Vashon Island, and herein captured is the more intimate, solo affair this fourth Downpilot outing harbours.

★★★★★ Initially ‘A Turn in the Dream-Songs’ plays out as a far less angsty affair than other helpings from New York based musician Jeffrey Lewis but there is little letting up in the talent of our comic book songwriter.

★★★★★ With more than forty years at the forefront of American music Ry Cooder’s latest release ‘Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down’ sounds like a cue for a couple of characters from Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat to kick back with a jug of cheap wine. But there’s far more on offer than some slick slide guitar and paisano chivalry.