Albums

For ‘Anniversary’, Abigail Lapell celebrates commitment and growing old together…with music and songs such as these, let’s hope her albums turn into an annual event.

Josienne Clarke’s ‘Parenthesis, I’ is an affirmation that out of the deepest darkness sometimes comes the brightest light…to paraphrase her lyric, Clarke spins her alchemy, she gives us hope.

Massachusetts duo Mark Mandeville & Raianne Richards return with Making Promises, their fourth studio album, once more steeped in their close harmony folksy Americana with several stripped-back acoustic songs inspired by their marriage in 2021. 

Billed as an auditory journey into tinnitus, Lola de la Mata’s ‘Oceans on Azimuth’ is a unique and challenging piece of art. While never an easy listen, it somehow manages to become welcoming and even comforting.

On their debut album “Goodnight, Lad”, Sean R. McLaughlin & The Wind-Up Crows defy categorisation, delivering sonic shifts and unexpected moments to revel in.

While Fiona Apple’s drummer Amy Aileen Wood may prefer staying out of the spotlight, her solo album, The Heartening, may put an end to that. Challenging and invigorating, it examines the rhythms of a percussionist in a class of her own.

Avalanche Kaito’s music is like sped-up geological movement, defined by a detailed and often aggressive maximalism. Throughout Talitakum, the fragments pull together in tight cores, resulting in a gripping, uncompromising and constantly engaging album.

Ancestors is the second collection of folk songs from prolific Canadian musician Allister Thompson…what sets it apart are his interpretations -it’s as much a concept album about folk music as an actual folk album.

Swallowtail, Jim White’s and Marisa Anderson’s latest offering, is an album of quiet assurance and power. Shaped through improvisation and musical conversation, it encapsulates everything there is to love about improvised instrumental music.

Arianne Churchman and Benedict Drew’s May is a hypnotically good album. It is a long, involving listen, panoramic in scope but thematically focussed, and it manages to be both celebratory and strange, a nod to our folkloric past and a mesmerising hymn to the present.

While Kevin Coleman’s Imaginary Conversations may contain only three tracks, it is one of the most varied albums of the year so far. It’s a sweeping and stunningly accomplished album, brimming with ideas, and offers a glimpse into multiple potential futures for American folk music.

With Ruth Theodore’s meticulously constructed melodies and literate, open-hearted and relatable lyrics, ‘I Am I Am’ is her finest album to date.