Albums

With “Everything in Readiness”, Shovel Dance Collective have combined vision and virtuosity, intuitive gristle and scholastic rigour to create the best folk album of the year. This is folk music in its most potent form. By allowing itself to be hybridised and mongrelised by other influences, they are getting closer to what’s most vital and true about the form.

Darren Hayman completed “I’m Your Team” in 2022, and it sat on the shelf for four years. Built on constraint, with a DX7 synth at its centre, it sees him at his most undiluted and emotionally stark, delivering some of the best songs of his career.

claire rousay’s “on holding” pairs dusty piano with field recordings and fleeting sparks of electronic background noise. The mood is free and quietly exploratory. She uses dissonance to interpret daily life in the abstract. We know from past work that every note she commits to tape serves a purpose; here, that feels, at times, self-reflexive, giving us a valuable glimpse into a highly original process that is always sonically rewarding. 

Richard Thompson’s “Hippies, Thugs and Heroes” pushes the envelope much further in studio craft and arrangements than its predecessor. There are startling musical diversions and excursions throughout, with the full band bringing extra textures. Six decades in, this cornerstone of British folk-rock still has the capacity to evolve, and this album stands tall among his recent releases.

Powtes’ “Destroying A Living” is a sonic monument to the common folk dispossessed when the Fens were drained. A six-piece band helmed by Gus Beamish, they bring the ecstasy of group improvisation to the austerity of the drone. It sounds as if they’re all performing live in the same room, responding to the warp and weft of their collective humanity.

Arborist’s “Looking For Love” explores love and its absence, using Belfast as a microcosm for the wider world. It is Mark McCambridge’s first self-produced record, made in his home studio with help from old friends. The record features some beautiful poetry, and McCambridge sets an extraordinarily high bar for composition, songwriting, and arrangement.

It’s been thirty years since the Silver Jews released their landmark second album “The Natural Bridge”. To mark the occasion, Thomas Blake takes a deep dive into David Berman’s complex lyrical world. In this highly personal and wide-ranging essay, Blake makes the case for The Natural Bridge as a masterpiece of alternative music while documenting the effect Berman’s lyrics have had on his life.

Oren Ambarchi’s “Cooked” is two side-length pieces of mysterious beauty in which he goes further through the looking glass. This is ensemble improvisation at its most accomplished, with an international cast of master abstractors. In Drag City, Ambarchi has found a larger platform to bring his mutant blues to the masses. This is a public service which should be applauded because, 100-plus releases in, he’s rarely sounded better.

Jason Dungan (aka Blue Lake) and Johan Carøe’s “Routine” is like a shared creative diary, its ideas growing slowly as their friendship developed. Real life imprints itself on the music, so this ostensibly ambient album explores different moods and shifting modes. Slow music that is rarely imposing and never overly showy, yet contains genuine emotional heft. It is also unabashedly enjoyable, from start to finish. 

Garefowl recorded “Things That Vanish” at night on Hirta, the main island of St Kilda. There are no synths this time: field and hydrophone recordings and X-ray diffraction drones take their place. In this Track by Track, the band introduce the seabirds behind the tunes. “It is not too late to learn the lessons of the past.”

Kahil El’Zabar’s “Sketches For Trane” is an astonishing suite in tribute to John Coltrane, released for the centenary of his birth. At 72, the Chicago drummer has gone back to the future to propagate Coltrane’s message of expanded human potential to a new generation of listeners. Alex Neilson calls it one of the best albums he has reviewed for KLOF.

The Leaf Library’s “Library Music: Volume Two” is a form of “compilation as curation”, drawn from a decade or so of recordings. Every release from the band feels like an exploration of pop music’s possibilities, and this archival collection is the perfect way of experiencing their range and sonic versatility. We can only hope that “Volume Two” isn’t the final instalment.