Albums

★★★ Tiny Ruin’s debut album, Some Were Meant for Sea, paints tender and quaint stories of fictitious, perhaps allegorical figures that are as vivid as the climes in which they are placed.

★★★ Maria Taylor’s fourth solo release, Overlook, fixes itself firmly in a familiar location, embodying a sound created with a closeknit set of musicians plucked from Taylor’s close friends and family.

★★★★ Dark Nights Make for Brighter Days is the debut album Scottish singer-songwriter Samantha Whates. As the title suggests, a record of contrasts and contradictions.

★★★ Paul Hiraga’s Downpilot latest release, New Great Lakes, was recorded in the woodland setting of Seattle’s Vashon Island, and herein captured is the more intimate, solo affair this fourth Downpilot outing harbours.

★★★★★ Initially ‘A Turn in the Dream-Songs’ plays out as a far less angsty affair than other helpings from New York based musician Jeffrey Lewis but there is little letting up in the talent of our comic book songwriter.

★★★★★ With more than forty years at the forefront of American music Ry Cooder’s latest release ‘Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down’ sounds like a cue for a couple of characters from Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat to kick back with a jug of cheap wine. But there’s far more on offer than some slick slide guitar and paisano chivalry.

★★★★★ Michigan based band Small Houses return with their second LP North. Composed entirely by guitarist/vocalist Jeremy Quentin, featuring helping hands from fellow musicians Chris Bathgate and Jim Roll, alongside members of Frontier Ruckus and Red Tail Ring.

★★★★★ Robert Doyle’s fingerstyle guitar playing, and the guitar’s mesmerizing tone, are the main draws of ‘Life In Shadows’. His guitar style benefits from the influence of his former tutor, French-Algerian guitarist Pierre Bensusan and his emotional vocal performances owe much to the Sean-Nos style.

★★★★★ With T-Bone Burnett at the helm and featuring cameos from Ryan Bingham, Sam Phillips, Rosanne Cash and Marc Ribot the album features only two self penned tracks and one co-write. The more I listened the more I began to sense that there is more Burnett than Bridges…

★★★★★ File Under Fiction is the latest release from Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers. Findlay and writing partner Nick Turner have delivered a collection of songs full of earthy humour, hopeless love and biting satire.

★★★★★ Orienteers’ eponymous second release is a hazy, fragile, almost celestial sounding appreciation of travel (hence the name), and it follows up 2008′s Staying Places; released by the same folk under their original guise That’s the Spirit.

★★★★★ Honest Words may clock in at just over 10 minutes; this time whisking us away from the Fife landscape, yet it plays out as a suitable follow up to King Creosote & Jon Hopkins‘ Mercury nominated Diamond Mine.