Featured Albums of the Month

Edgelarks have created an album that captures something long-lasting, universal and difficult to pin down: the nature of human happiness and the need for hope, not just now but in perpetuity. And in that respect Feather is an uplifting triumph.

Kate Rusby’s 17th studio album “Philosophers, Poets & Kings” is utterly delightful; she journeys into new territory while maintaining that unshakeable bond to her musical heritage. One of her finest albums to date.

Antonio Forcione (Italy), Seckou Keita (Senegal) and Adriano Adewale (Brazil) bring together the musical traditions of three continents with contemporary themes and rhythms in an utterly beguiling album.

What impresses and resonates most with Alex Seel’s new album is how these nine songs all hang together to create a satisfying whole. It is confident work and a lesson in meticulous craftsmanship resulting in a concise and lean set of songs that are bursting with creative ideas and performed with the utmost care and ability. His best yet.

Featuring some of the best British & Irish Folk artists, Vision & Revision serves as a reminder of the enriching ways folk song lends itself to reinvention, and the idealists, innovators and romantics that have passed through their ranks….yet another testament to Topic’s enduring legacy.

With The Little Unsaid, John Elliott has carved out a niche as a poet of mental disintegration, a chronicler of very real and very difficult human emotions. But his songs are not without hope. Atomise is perhaps his darkest and most hopeful album to date. It is certainly his most expansive and fully realised.

Singing It All Back Home has all the passion and history of the characters that populate these stories; Naomi Bedford & Paul Simmonds paint them in a fascinating new light, while holding fast to their enduring heritage in an outstanding album.

Wonderful Fairytale sees Bill Jones return in excellent form, with an exceptional album that fulfils the promise of her early career, and confirms that this gifted performer still has so much to offer.

It is a rare album that can make traditional music sound truly modern, but The Drystones have managed it here. Apparitions is the kind of album that could change the very meaning of contemporary folk music.

On Stick In The Wheel’s second ‘From Here’ compilation well-known interpreters of traditional song rub shoulders with experimental folkies while Brit-folk royalty has a place at the table alongside impassioned protest-singers.

I have believed for a long time that there is magic contained in forms of improvised music that cannot be found in others and this album by Cormac Byrne and Adam Summerhayes certainly backs that theory. Their Stone Soup project is the best thing I have heard so far this year.

For me, ‘Union’ is the album where this incarnation of Son Volt have finally found their true voice and most authentic sound. This is the most musically rewarding album they have ever delivered.