Albums

Americana often conjures up words like psychedelic or cosmic, but the form rarely offers such a way-out hue as experienced here; Wes Tirey Sings Selected Works Of Billy The Kid is a true one-off. 

Are Possible, the first full album from the trio Nathan Bowles, Rex McMurray and Casey Toll, is an outstanding slow burner of an album that benefits from repeated listens to unearth its intricate melodic details, phrases, time signatures and rhythmic shifts.

The Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties Vol. V covers Norfolk and West Yorkshire, courtesy of Pefkin and Dean McPhee. If this quality is maintained throughout the series, we will have a stunning and important body of work on our hands.

Chris Cohen’s Paint a Room is an absolute joy, but it’s the uncanny kind of joy, the kind which can challenge you, and perhaps make you see the world in a different way.

Listening now to Lee Underwood’s California Sigh and its overriding mood of tranquillity, it’s hard to see how this album went unnoticed back in the eighties, being chock full of dynamic playing and interesting musical decision-making.

Jinxed by Being, the new collaboration from Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance, is as uneasy as it is beautiful…Collaborations of this quality are vanishingly rare.

Trá Pháidín travel South Connemara’s 424 bus route, creating a musical map that incorporates elements of Irish traditional music, earthy psych, ambient, kraut, free jazz, post rock, field recording and just about anything else you care to mention.

‘When I’m Called’ is Jake Xerxes Fussell’s finest set and his most delicately arranged. Let this one bed in after a few listens and allow its delicate layers to slowly emerge; you’ll feel grateful for such beautifully performed and arranged music.

Irish duo Rezo’s new album, The Age of Self Help, applies the lessons that need to be learned in an era where being heard has never been more challenging. Watch their new video for Circle Closed.

On Midsummer, London, Kate Carr is content to let the streets do the talking, observing the pulses and rhythms which otherwise go unnoticed: the fluvial gulping of the Thames, the polyrhythmic interactions of commuters’ footsteps, the industrial ambience of roadworks.

Natalia Beylis is an artist uncommonly in tune with the physicality of her surroundings and extremely attuned to the politics and history of these landscapes. With Lost – For Annie, an unexpectedly moving album, she demonstrates examples of all of these qualities.

Celebrated Scottish fiddle player Laura Jane Wilkie’s debut album ‘Vent’ screams confidence from start to finish. There are surprises and delights throughout its nine tracks that will demand many listens, each bringing something new.