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Gretchen Peters has reacted to the adoring reception of Blackbirds by writing an even better album in Dancing with the Beast. This is assured, highly impressive work from all involved.

With a new ‘worth the wait’ album now delighting fans the world over, we caught up with the singular John Prine, our Artist of the Month, to discuss nocturnal writing, old songs and families.

III is a folk album played with the inventiveness of jazz and the control of chamber music. It is suffused with pastoral light but anchored in earthy realism, unshowy but technically innovative, driven by emotion but never sentimental.

Shorebound is the sound of Ben Glover planting one foot firmly in his hometown of Glenarm, Northern Ireland and the other just as firmly in Nashville, Tennessee. It oozes confidence and skill. The production is assured, the playing excellent and the singing very beautiful. This is a worthy piece of work from a class act.

Great art can often come from the darkest places…many of these songs were born out of very real human experience. They are musically inventive and lyrically astute documents of this experience, but more than that they offer a clearer way of understanding it, and perhaps even a way of helping to overcome its darker periods.

Brilliant writing and no-frills singing from a veteran of the game and a band of experienced musicians and guests who leave the words and the nuanced experience coming through in the vocals and lyrics to stand in the foreground, while weaving a musical web that keeps the whole thing perfectly cohesive throughout.

A remarkable album of such texture and prowess that at points its scope, concentrated into the workings of two masters of their instruments, takes the breath away. The pacing, structure, packaging and context, including inspired liner notes from Andy Morgan, is all impeccable and it all combines to result in a truly inspired, beautifully conceived project.

ARC is a rich, varied and essential release for anyone who likes traditional music with plenty of thoroughly contemporary reference points and bright tunes that reveal more layers with repeated listening. A superlative work that sounds quite unlike anything else you’ll hear any time soon.

Ross Ainslie & Ali Hutton have yet again proven themselves to be not only masters of Scottish traditional music but at the very forefront of the movement that continues to breathe new life into that music, inspiring the next generation. Symbiosis was beguiling, Symbiosis II is utterly hypnotic.

This is absolutely primo Canadian roots music, entirely relatable, emotionally rewarding, and if, at the very least, it fails to gain a Songwriter of the Year nomination for the 2019 Juno Awards, it will be both bewildering and an injustice.

Veteran singer songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter has just released ‘Sometimes just the Sky’, a reimagined set of songs that span a thirty-plus year long career. We met to chat about the inspiration behind the project.

St. Peter is an album full of shimmering, finely crafted layers. Emma Tricca has employed an enviable array of talented collaborators to help achieve this unique effect, but it is her own approach to music-making that really marks this out as a serious piece of work and her best album to date.