Albums

Alice Gerrard’s Sun To Sun acts both as a tonic and a kick in the pants: it reminds us of the enduring place of protest in folk music but also of the importance of humour and heart in life as well as in art.

Starlight Tour stands up there with Rod Picott’s best albums to date; if this is the first crop of him ploughing a new field of dreams, then future harvests should prove no less bountiful.

The Achill Sound’s Isle Of The Eagle is a fascinating documentary recording, interweaving stories of Achill Island’s’ past with traditional tunes and songs. Spending time with it will transport you to the homes, classrooms and local pub locations of Achill Islands storytellers and traditional musicians.

“There is Only Love and Fear” is a wholly distinctive musical language, a jazz-inflected improvisational world music that quotes from minimalism without ever being in thrall to its history. When you consider that this is Bex Burch’s solo debut, that’s quite some feat.

Gentle yet searching, yearning yet hopeful, Mutual Benefit’s ‘Growing at the Edges’ always seems to hold out hope despite how grim things can feel…just as birds seem to know that spring will come again.

Providing thoughtful commentary on how the news is obtained and reported and a potted live Megson concert, “The Herald” album most certainly warrants getting some metaphorical ink on your fingers.

In the final moments of Ozarker, on which he pays homage to his Ozark roots in small-town Missouri, some of the songs drawing on his family history, Israel Nash sings, “I didn’t strike the match but I let it burn”. This album positively blazes.

Tashi Dorji’s 2012 cassette-only release Guitar Improvisations is to be released on vinyl for the first time. Watch the new video for Improvisations I – Playing purely experimentally, he inhabits the now, increasing the elements in his play and carefully building a hypnotic whole.

The songs on See The Big Man Cry have been so well chosen and covered that should Robert Rex Waller Jr fancy flipping through his record collection for a third volume, it would be very welcome.

With Sonder III, Harriet Riley and Alex Garden play with a confidence and beauty that tugs at the heartstrings while illustrating how new forms can evolve from unlikely combinations, creating unparalleled magic.

On Imaginational Anthems Vol. XII: I thought I told You, a tribute to Michael Chapman, each artist brings a freshness to the songs and offers a different perspective on many of them, making it a fascinating and rewarding album.

With ‘The Land Of My Other’, The Breath have peeled away musical layers. What remains is all the richer for how it embraces the songs. They have made an album of exceptional depth and beauty, gifting us music at its most absorbing.