News
A major archival release celebrates Martin Carthy MBE. “Along The Road Forever: Live At The BBC (1965-2022)” collects 328 recordings — 22½ hours across 20 CDs, spanning his solo work, his duo with Dave Swarbrick, with his daughter, Eliza Carthy, as well as Steeleye Span, Brass Monkey, The Watersons and Waterson:Carthy. It includes an 80-page book with a new Clinton Heylin essay.
Mama’s Broke announce their new album “Reunion,” out August 28th via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group, and share the 16mm video for the single “The Nameless.” Following the JUNO-nominated Narrow Line, the Nova Scotian duo hold a mirror to a fracturing world of broken communities and systems that no longer deliver. We trace the announcement through our archive.
LA quintet SML announce “Spontaneous Music Live,” out June 26th on International Anthem. After two studio albums collaged from live fragments, the band strip the editing away: two side-length pieces of unedited improvisation, recorded to analog tape during their December residency at Zebulon. Lead piece “Roundabouts,” the 24-minute B-side, is streaming now — SML in the room, fully in the moment.
Oisin Mod returns with “Mirror Mirror,” his first new music since 2022’s Honeycomb and again produced by Bill Ryder-Jones. The Galway songwriter pairs retro swirl with warm analogue keys and gentle vocals on his most introspective writing yet, calling the track a study in pretending and observing others do the same. The video is directed by Mod and Rory Ryan.
Rowena Wise announces her second album, Bad Things Feel Good*, and shares new single and video, Diamond In The Rough. The song, “about the pressures of being told that you’re special from a young age, creating an unattainable standard you must maintain,” is accompanied by a Didirri-directed video, the concept for which was inspired by Jamie Lee Curtis’ ‘The Last Showgirl’.
Family Stereo, the project of singer-songwriter Blake Watt, shares “Waiting On Nina,” the second single from debut album The Thread, out 31st July via Bella Union. The country-tinged folk-rock track turns on birth and innocence, lit by Dov Sikowitz’s lapsteel. Recorded over nine months in north London with producer Sam Hodder-Williams, the album is followed by four UK headline shows in September.
Scottish songwriter Jo Mango returns on June 12th with her new album “The Lightswitch,” a concept album about her love for music, but also the fall-out of love, the shadow behind it, the emptiness left behind when the music draws to a close. Taken from the album, watch her performing her latest single, The Clock, co-written with Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow.
Aaron MF Olson shares “Who Do You Think You Are I Am?”, the second single from “Songs Album II”, out June 26th via Country Thyme Records. A rough-and-tumble pop progression that grinds immaculate ’50s and ’60s hooks into glittering noir. “I am the window, you are the breeze. I am the pollen, you are the sneeze.”
London-based cellist, composer and producer Oliver Coates releases “The History of Sound,” the original motion picture soundtrack to Oliver Hermanus’s period romance starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor. As well as singing on several tracks, Sam Amidon, a KLOF favourite, was also a music adviser and was tasked with turning the film’s two stars into seasoned balladeers in just three weeks.
Spell Songs return on 4th September with their third album, In Thin Air, out via Hudson Records. A musical companion to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s The Book of Birds, it follows the “Seven Wonders” from nest to migration — a celebration of birdlife and a plea to halt its loss. First single “Flight” is out now, ahead of a September UK tour.
Tara Clerkin Trio have shared “Lazy Daisy”, the latest track from their forthcoming album “Somewhere Good”, out 5th June via World of Echo. Following a 6 Music session, it’s the Bristol trio’s first album since 2023’s “On The Turning Ground” — forty-odd minutes of harmonium, upright bass and hushed vocals, sounding more like themselves than ever.