Featured Albums of the Month

Sam Carter’s third solo album ‘How the City Sings’ presents a perfectly balanced blend of soft acoustics, upbeat rhythms and fiery rock. A wonderfully engaging release that showcases the wide spectrum of his craft.

Fuel is a thoroughly delightful album, and a perfect example of patient and careful growth resulting in a blossoming of creativity. The pace and vitality engage the senses, the vocal performances are captivating and those arrangements, with their wide range of influences, are delightfully detailed but never overdone.

The Silent Majority is an album which firmly establishes the reputations of Greg Russell and Ciaran Algar as one of the best duos on the British folk circuit today and if there’s any justice in this world, it will sell by the wagonload to existing fans and newcomers alike.

Paper Beat Scissors has just recorded a great session for Bob Harris’ Under The Apple Tree sessions. Watch the first song from that performance called ‘Shapes’. He is currently on tour in the UK supporting the release of his new album ‘Go On’, one of our Featured Albums of the Month.

This is a much stronger step forward from Blue Rose Code than might be initially apparent. It’s an album that rewards return visits with new discoveries and one on which his Scottish roots are far more in evidence. Ultimately, it’s all about those songs…his best yet.

The Longing Kind is a milestone record, both in terms of encapsulating Maz O’Connor’s recent personal journey and offering tantalising views of potential new directions on her musical road ahead – recommended to anyone looking for an insight into what makes a great contemporary folk record.

Our Song of the Day comes via a new video from The Owl Service for Living By The Water, a great cover of Anne Briggs’s darkly visionary opus which features on their latest album ‘His Pride. No Spear. No Friend’.

For ‘Summer Isles’, Mairearad’s taken what seems like a whole new approach to writing, a wealth of new influences and woven a warm, finely crafted tribute. It’s as enchanting as the islands that inspired it and as full of riches as their history.

In 2, The Gloaming meet and exceed the expectations encouraged by their debut. It’s another enthralling, captivating interpretation of Irish tradition. For some reason it’s all rather emotional – that emotion tends to be joy, frequently mixed with wonder.

From the opening track The Owl Service offer a triumph of execution against expectation if ever there was one, and a challenge that sets the bar for the remainder of the disc. Invigorating, bold, uncompromising and honest! If this is their final release then it’s a fitting one.

Our Song of the Day comes from Jim Causley with ‘Home’ from his new album Forgotten Kingdom which is launched this Wednesday 17th Feb at Kings Place. Special guests on the night include Steve Knightley & Phil Beer of Show of Hands.

It penetrates your conscious on the first listen and unfolds as all its glorious fecundity comes flooding to the surface. A folk-pop-ambient-electronica soup of loveliness.