Albums

★★★★★ The stirring vocals of St. Vincent return with the release of her third album, Strange Mercy. Reunited with producer John Congleton (Actor 2009) Annie Clark makes a departure from previous releases with her eletric guitar holding court on centre stage.

★★★★★ June Tabor and Oysterband have provided far more than a heady mix of traditional ballads and contemporary songwriting. The album raises the spirit and tears at the soul in turn. It takes all the artists involved in new directions, each and every one of them revelling in the exploration of uncharted territory.

★★★★★ Arctic is the first album by Swedish indie/folk-artist Thomas Denver Jonsson to carry the new moniker of ‘I’m Kingfisher’. The gentle nature of the music, experimentation and subtle electronica draw out his incredible voice and lyrics, this is just the beginning.

End of the Road festival yet again evaded the wet weather bookending it, and returned to the Larmer Tree gardens in Salisbury with a new layout, new ‘The Woods’ stage and perhaps its most varied line up yet.

Last week’s Tasseomancy album release show at London venue CAMP exposed a short yet evocative set illuminating their talents as songwriters and songmakers, but more so as mood makers.

★★★★★ Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside mix vintage jazz, blues, roots, rockabilly and punk, not forgetting Sallie Ford’s incredible powerhouse of a voice that sounds like she walked out of an Alan Lomax recording to raise the goddamn roof like a southern preacher!

★★★★★ On Juju’s latest release, In Trance, they don’t just dissolve the fragile boundaries between African tradition and rock – they demolish them with relish, they turn the walls upside down, they crash the gates open and set the inmates free. And the freedom is exhilarating!

★★★★★ I’m Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die is the fifth installment from Global Jukebox, an independent label from the Alan Lomax Archive. No music collection should be without it!

★★★★★ Nils Frahm’s latest release, Felt, is an incredibly moving work of musical art that balances modern classical alongside the rich natural sounds that play at the edges of our consciousness, it is nothing short of a masterpiece.

★★★★★ Anna and Harvey Elias moved from Yorkshire to a rural setting in the English Midlands since which they have been influenced by both the music and the ethos they discovered in the local folk scene. These influences have been brought to light in their debut album.

★★★★★ Gudrid Hansdóttir’s work is a stirring mix of contemporary classical music and rural inspired folk, combining songs of English language with bewitching fables in her native Faroese tongue, an insular Nordic language spoken by fewer than 50,000 people.

Tassili offers existing fans of Tinariwen more of what they love while embracing influences that are sure to bring them to a wider audience. In returning to their desert roots, Tinariwen have succeeded in shaking off the two most potent symbols of their origins – the gun and the electric guitar, yet still affirm their right to exist as a desert people.