Albums

At the heart of Roo Panes’ ‘The Summer Isles’ are nostalgic memories and wonder, bolstered by deceptively complex music with soft, subtle hues that frame images expressing romantic joy and beauty, and a road map to love.

Featuring one of the most striking songs I’ve heard this year, Songs For John Alfred marks the arrival of a conspicuous new voice on the folk-Americana circuit; a full album from Broken Harbours is eagerly awaited.

Salt House’s “Riverwoods” feels far more important and pertinent than a regular release. It is an album of stirringly gorgeous music that fully delivers its message about the importance of nature and its inherent beauty in our world, along with how we need to maintain it.

Hack-Poets Guild features three of the finest musical minds that the British folk scene has to offer, and on Blackletter Garland, an album that is more than the sum of its parts, they demonstrate the possible futures of folk music, all of them varied and vibrant.

Folk music has always been inextricably tied up with history, but rarely has the relationship been as mysterious and rewarding as it is here with Milkweed’s ‘The Mound People’.

With Almost a Sunset, Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman draw on traditional roots, refracted through a contemporary lens; this is not so much a sunset as the dawn of a glorious new chapter in their increasingly illustrious career.

Five years on from his last release, Slaid Cleaves returns with ‘Together Through The Dark’, an album that reinforces his status as one of Americana’s finest singer-songwriters on a collection of songs that speak of loss, longing, change and trying to make it through.

No Food Without Taste If By Hunger, with its hypnotic, bouncy basslines, sixties-style trippy, psychedelic guitars, seductive and oft electrifying keyboards, compelling highlife horns and raw, primal trance-like grooves makes for an irresistibly infectious album. Intoxicating funk music at its very best.

Today, sees the release of Horse Lords Live in Leipzig, described as an exploded view of the quartet’s unparalleled live show. Watch them performing ‘Mess Mend’, which gives a brilliant insight into the complexities of their music and the demands it places upon the musicians.

Leveret’s new album ‘Forms’ is a mesmerising and nourishing treat for both the ears and the soul, as they pay homage to their love of the English folk tradition whilst simultaneously breathing new life and energy into historic tunes.

Alice’s ‘L’Oiseau Magnifique’ is a beguiling album of musical collages, replete with eccentric wit and crystalline vocals and harmonies; if you expect the unexpected, you will not be disappointed.

On Grief in the Kitchen and Mirth in the Hall, Alasdair Roberts’ performances are musically exquisite, while his singing has never sounded so emotionally charged. The quality of Roberts’ music is astoundingly high, and nearly three decades into his career, that shows no sign of letting up.