Harry’s Seagull shows how old songs sung with affection and skill can sparkle like new. Georgia Shackleton’s solo debut is light as a gull’s feather but flush with ideas: it’s one of the freshest and most appealing folk albums of the year.
We talk to The Furrow Collective (Rachel Newton, Alasdair Roberts, Lucy Farrell and Emily Portman) about their new album, We Know by the Moon – a chilly delight: eleven folk songs blasted by winter winds and steeped in the glow of firelight and moonlight.
On ‘Look Over the Wall, See the Sky’, John Francis Flynn unropes songs from their historical moorings and lets them barrel downstream…Refreshing and vividly utopian, these songs exist in liberated states that have the feel of radical statements.
The Furrow Collective are simply one of the most formidable combinations of musicians in today’s folk music scene, and in “We Know by the Moon”, they have created one of the year’s outstanding albums.
Honey & the Bear’s “Away Beyond the Fret” is a remarkable album, especially for capturing profound personal moments alongside folklore, history, nature, superstition, and awe-inspiring tales. They live it like they sing it, with open minds, ears and hearts.
We chat to Sheffield’s Melrose Quartet about their new album ‘Make the World Anew’ – a staunch defence of the sheer joy of creativity, allowing for contemporary political songwriting and age-old dance tunes, poignant a cappella standards and complex instrumentals.
Chris Brain’s ‘Steady Away’ is an introspective and reflective offering. Intelligently written and considerately handled, it’s everything a second album should be; an excellent album by a musician really starting to bloom.
Catrin Finch & Aoife Ní Bhriain’s ‘Double You’ goes beyond virtuosic; it’s also layered with emotion, appreciation for style and tradition and the freedom of just playing. You are left feeling that this partnership was inevitable and absolutely necessary…an essential release.
Make The World Anew attempts in a small but determined way to achieve the edict set out in its title, and it succeeds resoundingly. It is the Melrose Quartet’s most upbeat and accomplished album to date.
We revisit Jackie Oates’ 2013 Lullabies album and listen again to her exclusive radio show on which she shares lullabies by some of her favourite artists. Jackie is on tour now with Mike Cosgrave and John Parker.
Adele H’s voice is dripping with passion and personality, and the transition to piano-based songs on Impermanence has allowed that voice to flourish. It is a wonderful work of art, brimming with confidence and bursting with important questions about womanhood, metaphysics and music.
As Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening return with their second album, Cloud Horizons, we chat with Kathryn about how the album came about, the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall, mythical magic, the multicultural history of Northumbria, job-sharing singers and more.
