Albums

Often dark and heartachingly sad, Scott Fagan’s ‘South Atlantic Blues’ is, nevertheless, an engrossing and rewarding listen. He will hopefully be rewarded in 2024 with the acclaim that both he and the album warranted in 1968.

In many ways, Dean McPhee’s latest offering is a cerebral trip for sure, but every minute of Astral Gold is brimming with what can only be described as soul.

Katherine Priddy’s ‘The Pendulum Swing’, is an incredibly cohesive album. With the central theme being the notion of home, it hits the heart and mind with pinpoint accuracy.

Andy Skellam’s latest album, Brighten up the Place, is a bountiful offering of well-crafted, warmly sung, surreally poetic and calming pastoral folk. Don’t miss his album tour which kicks off this week.

Released this month on Mississippi Records, Souvenirs is a lost and found recording of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, on which supple flowing vocal melodies meet irregular piano phrasing as Emahoy’s hands roam freely. It’s an amazing hoard of personal, spiritual and national yearnings.

Despite its 50+ years vintage, the music featured on the ‘Les Cousins: The Soundtrack Of Soho’s Legendary Folk & Blues Club’ boxset is exciting, vibrant and from some of the best players and performers of any era.

Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación! is Bongo Joe Records’ first compilation of music from the Caribbean, specifically the Dominican Republic and it is filled with authenticity, energy and verve.

Hafdís Huld’s ‘Darkest Night’ astonishes with its ability to take on extraordinary real-life personal and family stories with such a tender sense of grace.

Demi Spriggs’ music is hard to pin down; on ‘a boy called ear’, she manages to sound traditional and modern, otherworldly and haunting, mysterious and melancholic, intriguing and exciting.

Throughout Come Swim, Emma Gatrill creates a unique musical alchemy. By turning the writing process on its head, she gains the freedom to reinvent her music and, by doing so, has established herself as one of the most inventive women in music today.

Jenny Sturgeon and Boo Hewerdine’s Outliers revels in the beauty of the remote. While conceived and recorded entirely online, it feels astonishingly close. The attention to detail and clarity of sound are incredible, and their contributions are clearly defined yet entirely in accord.

Willi Carlisle’s Critterland, an album steeped in and driven by contradictions, its fingers grubby with the dirt of real life in all its joy and despair, confirms him as a strikingly individual voice.