Albums

With a family history that embraces legendary bluegrass outfit the Whitetop Mountain Band, Martha Spencer has a lot to live up to, but with this fabulous album, she more than does her heritage proud.

Featuring Sarah-Jane Summers, Juhani Silvola, Leif Ottosson and Bridget Marsden, the Siskin Quartet’s ‘Flight Paths’ is an exceptional album. Broad-reaching yet balanced, daring and compelling; I can’t recommend it highly enough.

French duo O’o, featuring Victoria Suter and Mathieu Daubigné, have created a challenging but rewarding album. Touche is quite unlike any other album you’ll hear this year.

Everything on this collection from Luke Daniels and The Cobhers is attacked with such life-affirming urgency… These are songs that have cut across the eras, the sub-cultures and age restrictions, and now, they are hoping to knock down genre fences as well.

British-Israeli collective Staraya Derevnya’s “Boulder Blues” is an unnerving, brilliant album that revolves around the twenty-plus minute opus Bubbling Pelt, which sounds like Comus and Faust fighting over a rare cache of Japanese psychedelic rock.

Jackie Oates’ “Gracious Wings” is an album underpinned by top-quality musicianship and another assured and enthralling collection from one of the undoubted talents of the contemporary folk music world.

With LAS, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Ross Ainslie and Steven Byrnes have delivered a highly accomplished album that, probably more than any other you’ll hear this year, unifies innovation and tradition.

On ‘Old Bones, New Fire’, Miraculous Mule continue to burn brightly, performing with zeal, a music that has shaped and continues to shape new generations.

While Luke Sital-Singh may be Dressing Like a Stranger, he is the same man he’s always been. The clothes may have changed, but he remains a talented observer of the human condition.

Bile Bear is the adopted moniker of Italian guitarist Denis Cassiere. His Bear Bile album is mesmerising and a rather lovely thing – a player who is certainly one to watch out for.

Perspectives On Tradition functions as a chapter in a manifesto for how folk music should be made and how tradition should be thought about. Stick in the Wheel are fearless when it comes to following their own standards, the results are rarely short of astonishing.

This is Eli Winter’s A Love Supreme moment; like Coltrane’s masterpiece, this album’s most profound qualities lie in its sense of unity, transcendence and hope. It’s a landmark album and the perfect ten.