Albums

Adam Haworth Stephens releases We Live on Cliffs. The singer songwriter half of folk-punk duo Two Gallants released this material on Saddle Creek records. Read our review

Long Voyage is an apt name for this Indie Folk band born from the mind of Nicolas Huart, an inveterate traveller who has journeyed well and settled in Leipzig, Germany.

Late last week a vinyl record arrived at Folk Radio, a Double A Side 10″ Single from an artist called Jo Mango. We don’t normally receive vinyl but this weighty package held great surprises. The album artwork was beautiful, lovely imagery…two records in white (the moon) and black (the black sun) vinyl each etched with detailed and delicate illustrations by Nalle’s Hanna Tuulikki, another amazing artist with a unique and …

Formerly the project of Luke Temple, Brooklyn’s Here We Go Magic has now expanded into a five-piece, and since signing to record label Secretly Canadian just a year ago they have gone on to tour with the likes of Grizzly Bear and The Walkmen, as well as receiving praise from none other than Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, who stated of their Glastonbury performance, that it was the best thing he’d witnessed all weekend.

Expanded and now available on Substack: Timber Timbre doesn’t feel of this era; instead, it sounds like old testimonies, desperate bluesy numbers, and contemplations on the afterlife, redemption, guilt, and trials.

Josh Ritter and his suit adorned Royal City Band played possibly their biggest show to date at London’s Barbican Theatre on Thursday evening – ‘the only venue’, Ritter joked, ‘to have a tube stop named after it’.

The closing night of the three-day Campfire Trails event at East London’s The Troxy was highly anticipated enough for hosting bluegrassers Old Crow Medicine Show and their frequent touring partners Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, and yet Friday, rounding off two prior evenings headlined by The Felice Brothers and Wild Beasts respectively; culminated in a ferocious display of musical talent and surprise special guests, making this one of the live performance highlights of the year – not to mention hugely surpassing most punters already sky …

I only recently discovered Agnes Obel whilst trawling myspace. She has been described as a cross between Ane Brun and Joanna Newsom. I can understand why the comparison has been made but try and put that out of your mind when you listen, not that my mention of it helps…bit like saying don’t think of pink elephants, alas… her EP, Riverside, features two songs written and performed by herself and …

Rachael Dadd is seated onstage at North London’s The Luminaire, arranged on a table beside her is a collection of crockery and three sets of chopsticks. It is an interesting experimental set up that I’m lucky enough to watch blossom into a spontaneous, twinkling performance of a new song that she tells me is inspired by her husband’s cooking of rice.

Despite musical beginnings a decade ago in Athens, Georgia under the moniker Fillup Shack, Matthew Houck’s better known Phosphorescent guise only recently crept out of the woodwork with acclaimed 2007 LP Pride, the lo-fi, haunted tones of which earmarked him as an artist of a similar highly praised songwriting stature to Will Oldham and Iron & Wine’s Samuel Beam.

On the back of a beautiful performance at End of the Road festival in Wiltshire, Iron and Wine, the moniker of Sam Beam returned to London’s Union Chapel to a silent, near motionless crowd hypnotised by his Southern, sombre folk songs.

Yes, The Vaselines are back after a long hiatus…some of you might feel the urge to run behind the sofa like you did when you were ten after watching Dr. Who when the Daleks ambled along on trolley wheels shouting “EXTERMINATE!” (children back then didn’t need special effects to scare the shit out of them). But hold on…don’t run yet! Apart from the fact that it seems to be the …