Albums

On Inner Day, Jim White expands on his percussive solo debut, creating a fuller, more detailed document. Keyboards, guitar, and even White’s own playful, semi-spoken vocals come to the front. It’s an impressive balancing act —a “clever, controlled use of tension” — between intricate drums and uncanny melodies. While White navigates wonder and trepidation in a mightily refreshing way, you still get the feeling that this is just the start.

Folklore forager Jake Xerxes Fussell and producer and musician James Elkington provide the score for Rebuilding, a poignant film of recovery and resilience. Their seventeen miniatures, built on guitar and fleshed out with pedal steel and subtle strings, evoke classics like Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas, yet swap its iconic dust for palpable warmth and optimism. The music is almost minimalist but captures the magic of cinematic landscape and human emotion.

Through The Open Window: The Bootleg Series Vol 18 (1956-1963) delivers the definitive document of Bob Dylan’s formative years. This meticulously curated, exhaustive set traces the evolution of an all-time legendary music figure from a teenage piano-basher to the folk generation’s leader at Carnegie Hall. An indispensable collection revealing the artist behind the myth through rare outtakes, home recordings, and essential live performances.

Josienne Clarke’s ‘Far From Nowhere’ is a giant leap of an album. Recorded in a remote Scottish cabin, the pared-back, analogue affair feels immediate and intimate, as if written on the spot. By exposing the DNA of her work, Clarke unlocks immense power, resulting in her “grandest effort to date” and the “best music of an already distinguished career.”

On Old Segotia, Seán Mac Erlaine and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh engage in an intense musical conversation. Rather than compromising between folk and jazz, they create a new palette, crafting varied tracks that shift from smoky grooves to avant-garde improvisation. Augmenting traditional instruments with electronics and field recordings, the duo create a complex, surprising map of new musical terrain.

Emily A. Sprague’s “Cloud Time” is one of the most stunning ambient records in recent memory. Recorded live in Japan, it draws from the “naturalist” school of modular synthesis, engaging with the Japanese tradition of environmental music. Sprague whittled hours of recordings into a suite that is both deeply contemplative and refreshingly human, a “sonic wonderment” of texture and off-the-cuff creativity.

On Merlyn Driver’s debut album, “It Was Also Sometimes Daylight,” there is an ease to his singing and playing that belies the nuance and complexity of his songwriting, which at times approaches genuine poetry. He takes highly personal, confessional songwriting and elevates it with unconventional language. It’s also a timely reminder of the small amount of time and space we all take up on this world.

With John Smith’s now much higher profile, these revisited and, at times, transformative reimagined songs should, deservedly, find a far wider acclaim and audience than the originals. At the same time, ‘Gatherings’ serves to remind us that he is one of the true elite on the UK contemporary folk scene.

Greg Jamie is unashamedly preoccupied with the liminal. Across a Violet Pasture, tilts at the hard-to-hit zone between sleep and waking. This is Old Weird America with a nod to the stranger recesses of British hauntology. At times, the Townes Van Zandt comparisons also seem more apposite than ever, a reminder that, for all the uncanny, rootless strangeness of his music, the album is built on Jamie’s outstanding songwriting.

Hannah Frances’s Nested in Tangles is a brave and demanding listen. The album’s complex layers reflect the messy, contrary nature of existence, shifting between chaotic brass, gentle folk, and soft jazz. Frances confronts difficult truths about family, loss, and self-appraisal, creating a piece of music that is challenging, unpredictable, and ultimately rewarding in its unflinching honesty and musical ambition.

Swiss-Portuguese guitarist Tiago Almeida releases “Rivages,” an artistic exploration of Portuguese fado reimagined for the classical guitar. The album is a masterful blend of tradition and innovation, drawing on influences from jazz, classical, and even electronic music. Exploring profound themes of migration and identity, “Rivages” promises to be a significant and unique addition to the contemporary classical guitar repertoire.

In his latest release, Archipelago of Shadows, Belgian composer Lieven Martens presents a work of profound gravity. The album, a five-track suite of field recordings and electronics, is directly shaped by his experience as a humanitarian aid worker in eastern Congo, where he interviewed survivors of sexual violence—a practice deliberately used as a weapon of war to shatter communities.