alt.folk
TRACK: Panteon – ‘Waking Waiting’: lighter-than-air alt.folk explores the void at the end of the affair
YVONNE AMBRÉE is an artist currently based in Berlin who writes, records and produces music under the nom-de-musique Panteon. She has a particular way with an airy, fragile folk melody and a voice to match, delicate and honeyed, just a touch of the Marissa Nadlers in her velvet swoop. Which is not something to be …
PREMIERE: Ted Barnes and Sarah Johns Music Party – ‘Arrangements’: theatrical delicacy from returning Clayhill prodigal
YOU MAY or may not have been blessed enough to have swooned for Clayhill, the cruelly underrated trio who got lumped into the semi-trendy genre ‘The New Acoustic’ by the music press alongside the likes of Lowgold and Kings of Convenience, which definition did them a massive disservice. Seek ye their albums; for further evidence …
TRACK: Renée Reed – ‘Fast One’: potent, dreamlike alt.folk from Louisiana
HAILING from Lafayette, Louisiana, Renée Reed has signed for Austin label Keeled Scales and released a single, the impressionistic, delightfully dreamy alt.folk of “Fast One”. Listen below. It’s a many-faceted thing for something as apparently simple as a one-woman-with-guitar folk tune; it has, by turns, a sleepy blurriness, a pillowside intimacy, the sort of mantric guitar …
Lizzie Reid – ‘Been Thinking About You’: jazzy swing with real heart, soul and devil-may-care
LIZZIE REID, the young Glaswegian songwriter who is a massive, massive new talent – no dissent now at the back, this is just how it is – has been melting hearts at Backseat Mafia over the past few months as she’s hashed out a little trail of candid and heartfelt tunesmithery en route to her …
SEE: The Stockholm video for James Yorkston and the Second Hand Orchestra’s ‘Ella Mary Leather’
AS THE year takes it final bows – mostly, you’d have to say, free from the tossing of bouquets, unless they’re dead black roses or somesuch – we at least have the joy of a soon-coming new album from Fife’s always warming James Yorkston, this time in tandem with The Second Hand Orchestra. The album’s …
SEE: Modern Studies – ‘The Failing Light’: Scottish chamber folk outfit release new EP for Fire
WITH the afterglow of their May album The Weight Of The Sun still warming us, Scottish progressive chamber folk quartet Modern Light are still intent on riding the melodic winds further in pursuit of their craft; and they’ve taken what they call some leftover seeds from the album sessions to nurture into tender-stemmed new tunes, …
TRACK: Leif Vollebekk – ‘Long Blue Light’: beautiful alt.folk from Montreal
CANADA’S Leif Vollebekk is another excellent alt.folk singer-songwriter in a country that seems, these past few years, to produce them just for fun. Andy Shauf, Patrick Watson, Yves Jarvis, Sing Leaf … there’s so much delicate and necessary songsmithery being produced north of the 49th parallel. He’s just released a digital two-track EP, “Long Blue …
SEE: MF Tomlinson – ‘Strange Time’: rising alt.folk talent announces debut album
MICHAEL TOMLINSON is the main man in the sorta-solo project MF Tomlinson, in which he plys a very neat line in indie folk/roots songcraft with a grainy bearhug of a voice. Australian by birth but based in London, Michael has just dropped the video for “Strange Time” a song very much about the upending of …
SEE: The video for Julia Jacklin’s ‘to Perth, before the border closes’ from her new Sub Pop 7″
IN MID-March, superb Australian alt.folk singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin was just one show from finishing a 12-month world tour for her second album, Crushing, when Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, announced the country would be restricting large gatherings due to the ‘rona. Within a week state borders had shut, and the three-month planned gap in Julia’s touring schedule has …
TRACK: Sophie Jamieson – ‘Forward’: confessional folk elegance
SOPHIE JAMIESON took a time-out from her career after a great beginning; and five years away from ‘the biz’ has left her stronger, more aware, ready to slam some finely honed truths into your chest with her EP Release, which is out on December 1st. Debuting aged 22 with her Where EP, which featured fragile …