Singer-Songwriter

An Abandoned Orchid House is a much deeper and richer album than considered at first listening. It is full of personal loss, searching and eventual recognition, survival and even revelation.

It has been ten years since his last excursion into the acoustic world of the singer-songwriter; on the strength of his latest album let’s hope that the gap is very much reduced.

Watch Na Jurnata ‘e Sole by Gnut, one of the finest young contemporary Italian singer-songwriters, taken from the first in a new discovery EP series from Piers Faccini’s record label Beating Drum.

The big-voiced Belfast-based singer-songwriter Matt McGinn returns with his third studio album ‘The End of the Common Man’, his strongest and most confident step forward to date.

A shift to more introspective material merely confirms not only his latent talent but also that, with Notes From An Island, his journey as one of our foremost singer-songwriters continues to be in the ascendancy. His most accomplished album so far.

Iron & Wine share ingenious stop motion video by Rachel Blumberg for ‘Last Night’, taken from their Grammy-nominated album, Beast Epic. They return to the UK later this year to headline Black Deer Festival in Kent, as well as perform in Ireland and Glasgow.

On this new collection, The Broken Heart of Everything, the gorgeous, rustic folk melodies and Francey’s lyrical prowess remain as reliably solid as they have been since his 1999 debut, Torn Screen Door.

Cowboy Junkies will release All That Reckoning, the band’s first new recording since The Wilderness (2012) on July 13, 2018 via Proper Records and return to the UK for live dates in November. Watch their video for the title track.

Our Song of the Day comes from singer-songwriter Juliana Daugherty with the title track from her forthcoming debut album “Light”. “Daugherty wields her songcraft like a sword, not a diary to be buried in a drawer.”

On her latest album, Lions Den, Jess Vincent opens up a whole new chapter. A sense of dislocation and slightly dreamy aura pervades several of the songs, giving the album as a whole a special ambience.

The cumulative effect of ‘The Great Untold’ is at once stilling, affirmative and inspiring, as you emerge at the other end as if you’ve been soaking in a bath of aural dead sea salts.  Matthews says that when he’s writing, “I’m almost hearing voices from The Masters and thinking: ‘Would they approve?’” Most assuredly.

Robert Francis released his seventh studio album Indian Summer back in November. Watch his new video The Brand, a reflection of a singer who has never been comfortable playing the industry game.