folk albums
Album Review: Jackie Leven – Straight Outta Caledonia…The Songs of Jackie Leven
I remember vividly the first time that I heard ‘The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ’ by outsider, Scottish troubadour Jackie Leven. It was 2001 and I was totally unprepared for and utterly mesmerised by the sheer audacity of Leven’s artistic reach and the epic sweep of his lyrics and music on that track. I couldn’t …
Album review: Alasdair Roberts og Völvur – ‘The Old Fabled River’: Scots-Norwegian sextet debut a record of correspondences, life cycles and exploratory depth
HE’S GRACED us with a very Northern European and delicious take on introspective folk since that trio of lovely albums, The Rye Bears A Poison, Daylight Saving and The Night Is Advancing as Appendix Out, beginning back in ’97; and it should come as no surprise that a man whose music arguably sounds best with …
Album review: Craig Fortnam – ‘Ark’: North Sea Radio man gathers his world in a prog-pastoral-folk craft of intricacy and thoughtfulness
ARCH GARRISON, whose lovely odyssey of modern Wessex psych-pastoralism The Bitter Lay we loved for all its exploration of thorny byways last year; a half-dozen or so long-playing outings in the North Sea Radio Orchestra; even back before the century’s turn, a solitary album with Shrubbies. In all these incarnations we’ve enjoyed and explored the …
Album review: Cameron Knowler – ‘Places Of Consequence’: a new music as old as the hills, immersive and atmospheric
TEXAN solo guitar practitioner and melodicist Cameron Knowler – whose lovely, exploratory album with Eli Winter, Anticipation, we fully embraced in early March – is unveiling his very first solo album with American Dreams this coming week. A lifelong Westerner and recent Los Angeles transplant, Knowler spent his childhood in Yuma, Arizona and Houston, Texas, …
Album review: Fuzzy Lights – ‘Burials’: Cambridge psych-folk prodigals grow a faerie ring of psych-folk, post-rock and more to lay your troubled bones within
IT’S BEEN all of eight years now since Cambridgeshire post-folk collective Fuzzy Lights have graced our ears with an album, that being Rule Of Twelfths; but the planets have aligned favourably for such a sonic missive and, scrying the near future, their fourth album of atmospheric acid-folk, Burials, will be handed down to us come …
Album review: Raoul Vignal – ‘Years In Marble’: a solid third chapter in an accomplished songwriting career
A small miracle of the independent European songwriting scene
Album: David Gray – Skellig
Folk troubadour Gray is on to his twelfth studio album titled ‘Skellig’. Which takes its name from a formation of precipitous rocky islands off the coast of Co. Kerry where in 600AD a group of monks set up a monastery, believing that leading such a merciful existence, they would leave the distraction of the human …
Album: Amigo The Devil – Born Against
Inspired by storytellers such as Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Fiona Apple. Amigo The Devil is the pseudonym of Danny Kiranos, known for his deep, challenging and emotive yet often humorous lyrics. He has further evolved as a songwriter, resulting in his new album ‘Born Against’ taking on a vivid and cinematic feel to the …
Album Review: Peggy Seeger – First Farewell
First Farewell is folk icon, Peggy Seeger’s, 24th solo album and it is out today via Red Grape Music. We’re told it’s ‘probably’ her final original album but based on the utter joy she still has for playing music and her never-ending supply of thoughts and ideas, it’s hard to believe we won’t see more …
ALBUM REVIEW: Snowpoet – Wait for Me; Chamber folk-jazz duo return with absorbing album
Third album for the London-based chamber-jazz pair