Albums

Even among the darkest moments of Kristen Grainger & True North’s ‘Fear of Falling Stars’, there’s a light somewhere on the horizon, bringing you back to listen again and again.

On ‘Look Over the Wall, See the Sky’, John Francis Flynn unropes songs from their historical moorings and lets them barrel downstream…Refreshing and vividly utopian, these songs exist in liberated states that have the feel of radical statements.

On ‘Cat Power Sings Dylan’, the audience’s reaction is an outpouring of love and gratitude deservedly raining down on a timeless set of music and an artist with the depth of understanding, integrity and feeling to pull it off. What a night this must have been.  

Fascinating in its simplicity while constantly shifting focal points, with Nightwater/ all the dead do is dream, Gabriel Birnbaum creates worlds that are the perfect antidote for whatever the day has brought.

Bryony Griffith & Alice Jones’s ‘Wesselbobs’ casts a light on treasured Yorkshire traditions, tales, and winter rituals. A charming seasonal offering that any folkie would be happy to find under the tree.

On ‘When the Roses Come Again’ Daniel Bachman returns to the past and does a wonderful job in skilfully blending his electronic touches with traditional music. Of his whole quartet of recent work, starting with 2018’s Morning Star, this is his strongest.

Dipped in an attractive psychedelic West Coast vibe, Half Stack’s latest offering, Sitting Pretty, shifts from previous whiskey-soaked rock to an overall more relaxed mellower feel.

Joined by Neilson Hubbard and Will Kimbrough, Dean Owens’s Pictures is an album haunted by ghosts and anchored by love, it might just well be the best he’s ever made.

The lack of musical constraint is a big part of what makes Frankie Archer’s ‘Never So Red’ such a persuasive, innovative release. Sounding both modern and traditional, it’s quite unlike any other folk music release out there today.

Jack Rutter is one of the most enthralling folk singers, guitarists & musicians on the British folk scene today – with This Is Something Constant, the final release in a trilogy, he has hit the highest watermark to date.

The Furrow Collective are simply one of the most formidable combinations of musicians in today’s folk music scene, and in “We Know by the Moon”, they have created one of the year’s outstanding albums.

Acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter Algis Fediajevas returns with his fourth album, Po trejų metų. While sung in his native Lithuanian tongue, his voice and atmospheric melodies have a deeply engaging honesty that crosses any possible language barrier.