Albums

El Tiradito (The Curse of Sinner’s Shrine) marks the next stage of Dean Owens’s hugely atmospheric collaboration with iconic Latin rockers Calexico. With Owens tapping into his inner Morricone, all it needs now is a screenplay.

Damir Imamović’s latest album, The World and all that it Holds, is a beautiful, crystal clear, unpretentious and direct offering. Produced by Joe Boyd and released on Folkways, it is a triumph and delight on so many levels and is performed with the utmost skill and soul.

Merry Hell are a seriously entertaining group, with songs that can strike a chord, uplift and engender feelings of well-being. Let The Music Speak For Itself is a retrospective collection that does so much more than merely ‘speak’; it positively roars.

Migrant Flocks is the third album from Chicago pedal steel player Sam Wagster and percussionist Skyler Rowe and it’s an intriguing and versatile record of real creative endeavour.

Karl Culley returns with ‘Stories Save Our Lives’, a deeply reflective offering, dealing with themes that are both haunting and dark as well as tender and hopeful.

Approaching his 78th birthday this month, Bruce Cockburn returns with ‘O Sun O Moon’, a terrific album, featuring a number of very special guests…possibly one of his best.

With Diad, Tim Edey & Ross Ainslie capture the freshness and spontaneity that has long been a hallmark of their live performances. It’s an album to be enjoyed again and again.

Patrick Pritchard’s latest album, a collaboration with the Canadian poet Patrick Woodcock on which eleven of his poems are set to music, is one steeped in wisdom, elegance and refinement.

With additional production from Daniel Lanois, the country aspects of Tinariwen’s Amatssou are subtle. Yet for all the Americana trimmings here, this band’s political take on praise-singing carries an eternal purity.

Gnoss’s ‘Stretching Skyward’ is an exciting and invigorating album. Alongside an intoxicating fusion of instruments, there is a well-earned quiet confidence on show, with a soft, subtle touch of Americana filtering through the band’s more traditional Scottish sound; it’s an innovative, accomplished meld.

It’s hard to define the feelings that flow from ther’s ‘a horrid whisper echoes in a palace of endless joy’ – there’s despondency and grief but also comfort as Jones ends: “There’s a whisper in my ear/ It only speaks to me of fear/ But I won’t pay it no mind”.

Maxine Funke’s output over the last few years has been consistently outstanding, and River Said shows her at her best and at her most varied. These are songs that gently demand attention, and longer compositions that are profound and moving and mysterious all at once.