folk albums
Album Review: Modern Studies – Swell To Great
It’s not that we ignored it – Its just that we completely missed September’s release of Modern Studies album Swell to Great, and as Matt H muses – more’s the pity. Even in this day and age, with bands increasingly self-releasing their stuff online and at gigs, there’s still a place for a record labels. …
Reissue: Terry Allen – Lubbock (On Everything)
I’m not a huge fan of ‘country’ music. Sure, I can appreciate its narrative qualities, I have a well chosen Johnny Cash compilation in my album collection, I love the output of Dr Hook before they took the full-on cheese-ballad route, I have a healthy respect for the music of Frankie Laine and Marty Robbins, …
Album Review: Xylaroo – Sweetooth
Harmony pop is a difficult art to master, but in Xylaroo we have an act who have seemingly leapt to the top of this difficult to ascend tree in a single bound. Fronted by sisters Holly and Coco Chant, Xylaroo have already toured widely and paid no small amount of dues, so perhaps it is …
Album Review: Matt Berry – The Small Hours
Matt Berry has is someone who has stealthily raised his reputation in the music industry in recent years without the wider world really noticing, slowly but surely increasing his audience size by word of mouth, putting out a new album every year since 2013 and playing rapturously received gigs. While The Small Hours hasn’t received …
Wilco : Schmilco
I can only imagine that at some point in an artist’s life taking yourself and your art so seriously can get pretty heavy. Eventually real life will start to outdo you in the drama department and what you once took so serious doesn’t seem all that important anymore. Health crisis, getting older, losing loved ones …
Album Review: Dolly Parton – Pure and Simple
I can’t remember a time when I hadn’t heard of Dolly Parton. As I grew up during the 80s, Parton always seemed to be part of the cultural background noise, and as the years have progressed she has seemingly remained a constant fixture. As my taste in music developed through the years, Parton was never …
Album Review: Pascal Pinon – Sundur
Pascal Pinon prove that absence makes their songwriting grow stronger with the chilling beauty of new album’ Sundur’. If Pascal Pinon’s 2013 album ‘Twosomeness’ was about sisters Ásthildur and Jófríður Ákadóttir being together, new album ‘Sundur’ – from the Icelandic proverb “sundur og saman” meaning “apart and together” – reflects on their separation. While Ásthildur …
Album Review: Peter Nordberg, Om man inte är här
Peter Nordberg puts his acoustic guitar to one side and fills your mind with detailed electronic soundscapes you can’t help but explore. It is not easy reviewing music when the lyrics aren’t in your native language. But music transcends the spoken languages communicating with you through tonal variations of vocals and instruments, timbre (musical texture), …
Album Review: William Tyler : Modern Country
William Tyler doesn’t make music as much as he paints aural landscapes. There’s a vast space within his records as a solo musician. The former Lambchop guitarist -over the course of three studio LPs- has created a musical world of dusty fields, endless horizons, and open roads that seem to never end. On his newest …
Album Review: Nick Worrall – Hero Buffet
If you’ve ever been bored by a “best” new album or track and said, “I bet there’s someone in a shed somewhere making better music than this,” it turns out that this hyperbolic assertion is actually true. I have found the shed. The occupant of the shed, located in rural Norfolk, is unsigned singer-songwriter Nick …