Albums

Norwegian record label Hubro is dedicated to jazz and folk-based music that is immersive, improvisational, and uncompromising. Benedicte Maurseth ticks all those boxes, and Hárr swells with a quiet beauty and bites with a keen experimental edge.

Bryony Griffith & Alice Jones’ “A year too late and a month too soon’ is traditional folk music at its most beguiling. An immersive album on which the songs are centre stage, performed by two of Yorkshire’s finest, delivered with absolute conviction and palpable charm.

After a two year hiatus, Karl Culley makes a welcome return with his cathartic Redshift. The EP precedes a full-length album planned for release later this year.

Rupert Wates returns to his roots in English folk music for his latest album which he says is “a love song to humanity”, the music “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Power to the people, indeed.

Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows, the second volume homage to the late great John Prine does ample justice to his talent and legacy, this is a terrific collection.

Featuring a number of special guests including Laura-Beth Salter and Rachel Hair, Paul Tasker returns with a beautifully vibrant instrumental album Tierra Quemada.

Joined once again by The Orphan Brigade and a number of guest musicians, Amy Speace’s Tuscon is a stunning and deeply affecting work, a catharsis for her and an epiphany for all who hear it.

Dena Miller has one of those voices so incredibly high and pure that, at times, it’s almost shocking the things she sings about as Deer Scout on her debut album, Woodpecker.

Featuring an all-star ensemble of Nashville musicians, Molly Tuttle delivers her first all-bluegrass album and Nonesuch debut with Crooked Tree – In a forest of Americana saplings, Tuttle is a sturdy evergreen whose roots cling deep.

The music of Calexico’s El Mirador creates an ever-changing multicultural kaleidoscope of the American southwest. Along the way, you discover that while the sounds may seem foreign, they are also intoxicating.

Controlled Burning is a mind-bender of an album featuring duets from guitarist Eli Winter and keyboard and synthesizer artist Jordan Reyes – unashamedly bonkers in places and calm and sedate in others.

VanWyck’s ‘The Epic Tale Of the Stranded Man’ is a major work that clearly, like the ancient epics on which it draws, serves as a cautionary mirror to society, it’s a stunning creation and surely, at some point, demands a dramatic multi-media staging.