One thing that keeps Dom Flemons engaged and inspired is his indelible belief in the magic and wonder of music. It is that spirit which rises to the fore so definitively on ‘Traveling Wildfire’, a deep and indispensable album.
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.
When singing unaccompanied and in unison, The Young’uns make an elemental sound, and on ‘Tiny Notes’, it pins you to the wall; they have created an album that has the potential to become a benchmark classic in modern topical folk music.
Joined by a number of gifted vocalists, Ben Walker’s ‘Banish Air from Air’ is a beautifully realised project, a fascinating, surprising and multi-faceted album of music, quite unlike anything you are likely to have heard before.
The songs on Jonathan Day’s ‘Sakura’ are characterised by a profound philosophical insight and the importance of music and nature. But most of all, it is an album about love and the small but important connections between humans in a world that can feel overwhelmingly big.
With ‘All Of This Is Chance’, Lisa O’Neill lets her own creative wings spread, unleashing every ounce of elation, despair and love that her music emanates. An epic canyon of sense and sound… a timeless piece of work, wholly unbound by style or genre, a universal shot of medicinal magic.
John McCusker’s ‘The Best Of’ is an ideal introduction to the breadth and depth of one of the very best traditional musicians working today…a rare musician whose fiddle style and overall production sound is both distinctive and alluring.
With ‘Out Of This Frame’ Rachel Taylor-Beales expresses large on a widescreen canvas that allows room for all her artistic faculties to breathe. This is an album that invites you in for a long ride, and it will not disappoint those who invest the time to get on board.
There is an elegance and quiet confidence throughout Hushman that makes it hard to resist. Full of balance, elegance and consideration…Perfectly pitched and performed, Ewan MacPherson’s Hushman is a little masterpiece of confidence and understatement. Wonderful.
Lady Maisery deliver compelling messages in the most memorable ways. ‘tender’, their first studio album in six years, finds them delivering their strongest collection of songs yet and instantly re-establishes them at the forefront of British folk music.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise – despite Stick in the Wheel’s fearsome, uncompromising and unashamedly experimental attitude to folk music; the live recordings featured on Endurance Soundly Caged prove that they can still engage with listeners on the most visceral of levels.
You, Golden, the first duo record from Owen Spafford and Louis Campbell, was always one to look forward to. Uplifting, probing and exciting, as well as wise and patient, it is an album to return to and savour. Excellent stuff.
