folk albums
EP: Clara Mann – ‘Consolations’ – Bristol newcomer’s exquisite debut EP
‘Soft, I will say it softly’, Clara Mann opens on ‘Thoughtless’. The lyric encapsulates this, her debut EP via Sad Club Records. Plaintive, classic “almost folk”, quiet, private and intimate, ‘Consolations’ has an almost pictorial quality. You see yourself in the world Mann creates. It’s almost as if you stand sadly with her as she …
ALBUM REVIEW: Julien Baker – Little Oblivions
Memphis-born Julien Baker returns with her haunting, ballad-filled 3rd studio album, that you would have to be oblivious to not be enamoured with. In her first solo album since Turn out the lights in 2017, Julien Baker is showing that she is back and better than ever before with a slowcore, self-produced album that is …
News: Nic Dalton reissues brilliant and vibrant solo album Romolo for the first time in limited edition vinyl
There was a while when the capital of Australia – Canberra of course – punched way above its weight in terms of music – legendary bands like The Church, The Lighthouse Keepers, The Falling Joys, Youth Group and the Plunderers all made their way out of the remote sterile planned city to greater things in …
Album Review: Ian David Green – Songs of the Sea
Songs of the Sea is Ian David Green’s debut full album, due for release on Bandcamp on 20th February 2021, and what a debut! Green is a singer-songwriter from Liverpool, now living in London. His musical influences range from folk greats like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison to more contemporary folk / indie …
Album Review: James Yorkston and the Second Hand Orchestra – The Wide, Wide River
Warm, natural, humorous, gentle, empathic ….all words that justifiably get bandied about in the scrabble to describe James Yorkston’s music. What’s often overlooked is his continued pursuit of different pathways around the songwriting landscape. He’s worked with Kieran Hebden, Simon Raymonde, Rustin Man and Alexis Taylor over two decades of record making and most recently …
ALBUM REVIEW: Jim Ghedi – ‘In The Furrows Of Common Place’: a bold, proud album of working class folk
In The Furrows Of Common Place is a bold and proud album of working class folk. It bears witness with an unflinching melodious anger – it’s the first essential album of 2021
EP REVIEW: Devendra Banhart – ‘Vast Ovoid’: bursting with ideas
DEVENDRA BANHART was one of the main beneficiaries of the American acid-folk explosion just after the turn of the century. He came in as part of that movement with bands like Vetiver and Espers and became almost the George Best of the movement: piratically handsome with that dusky hair and huge hoop earrings, a brace …
EP: Coma Wall – Ursa Minor
With little else to do beyond staring at a wall and quietly losing the plot during a global pandemic, Undersmile has done what many of us have done to keep sane – they’ve indulged in a little nostalgia, headed up to the attic and had a dig through their archives. Presumably, somewhere in the dark …
Album Review: Erland Cooper – Hether Blether
I’ve never been to the Orkney Islands. In fact my only reference before this has been the other two of Erland Coopers albums about, and based on, the Islands where he lives. After an album about the birds that inhabit the island with Solan Goose, and the sea which surrounds the islands in Skule Skerry, …