Featured Albums of the Month

The beauty and importance of this album lies partly in the fact that O’Hooley and Tidow recognise that an appreciation of this time of year – whether you want to call it Christmastime or not – is based on both personal and universal factors. This is an album of frosted beauty with a heart as warm as a coal fire.

The Melrose Quartet embody the kind of collaborative spirit and socially aware stance that makes folk music such an interesting, challenging and continually relevant form. As demonstrated on Dominion, they have prospered by seizing the day, by daring to do things that are slightly different…who are able to make old songs sound new, and new ones sound timeless.

With Midnight Milk, Adam Holmes demonstrates his willingness to mine the rich creativity behind his work and bring to the surface previously unimagined gems. Adam Holmes and the Embers have created an album that digs deep into the soul and finds it a place of calm comfort.

With Dead Man’s Dance (Dawns y Gŵr Marw) ALAW have not only created an impressive follow up to their 2013 debut, they’ve surpassed the brilliance of Melody with an even more invigorating, wider-ranging exploration of Welsh poetic and musical traditions. It is an inspired and unique album.

Bob Delyn a’r Ebillion return with their first album in fourteen years. Twm Morys and his band offer melodic inventiveness and lyrical panache on Dal i ‘Redig Dipyn Bach which summons images of the slate and moss of the Welsh landscape and lays bare the Welsh psyche. It is an impressive and moving piece of songwriting, in any language.

With his fourth studio album The Water Of Leith released this month, Blue Rose Code continues to draw on his increasingly inventive ability, as he quietly weaves flavours from a range of musical influences and personal experience, to produce his most thoroughly absorbing album to date.

Megan Henwood’s emerging maturity as a songwriter and performer resonates throughout the twelve songs on River on which a fascinating soundscape accentuates her consistently tight and skilful writing and singing.

With Gigspanner, Peter Knight has assembled one of the most quietly brilliant sets of musicians in the folk world and beyond. The WIfe Of Urban Law is both experimental and accessible; it is music that respects the past without being in thrall to it. And more importantly, it is a record of stunning and sustained beauty. 

Edgelarks is an album that is full of muted, autumnal beauty. Edgelarks may signify a new venture for Hannah Martin and Phillip Henry, but the quality of their songwriting and performing only continues to improve, this is their best yet.

Pretty Peggy firmly adds Sam Kelly & The Lost Boys to the list of artists who are proving that great party bands are no longer the exclusive domain of the Scottish & Irish music scenes. Pretty Peggy is easily one of the best albums to come from the ever-growing world of youthful folk music.

Strength and courage is what ‘Strangers’ is all about. Despite the hardships it describes, there is barely a moment on this album that doesn’t hum with positivity. The Young’uns have perfected a sound that is as unique as it is uplifting, and it would be no surprise if their already burgeoning popularity were to rise to even greater heights.

Gathering is Josh Ritter’s best collection so far of fractured and fearful characters who are battling the elements and their own inner demons. The album itself is a roller coaster of emotion with Ritter mining a rich seam of Americana music.