Folk
NEWS: Matthew E. White and Lonnie Holley announce avant-garde folk album; hear ‘This Here Jungle of Moderness/Composition 14’
THEY may at first somewhat unlikely bedfellows: Matthew E. White, who arrived back in 2011 with his debut album The Big Inner, seemingly a fully formed gentleman of classic Southern Americana; and Lonnie Holley, the scrap sculptor who released his debut set of free-flowing outsider funk, Just Before Music, at the age of 62 in 2012. …
See: Hand Habits release new video for 4th of July
Hand Habits, aka Meg Duffy, has released a new video for their new single ‘4th of July’ from their new EP ‘dirt’, which drops on February 19th via Saddle Creek. It’s a track that focuses on finding ways to let go of the parts of the past that no longer serve a purpose. of the …
PREMIERE: Fish and Scale – ‘You Can Call Me LOVE’: swoon for a folk troubadour’s embrace
HAILING from Franconia, in southern Germany, Roland Wälzlein is on a mission to bring us glowing, stirring folk as Fish and Scales – and we’re premiering his first, rather groovy and lovely, single of the year, “You Can Call Me LOVE” here today at Backseat Mafia. As a child of 6, he underwent – and …
NEWS: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles announce April album; see the brilliant instrumental bluegrass of ‘Joy Ride’
BILL MACKAY, the Chicago-based guitarist, improviser of note and all-round scion of six strings, sure loves to enter into a two-way conversation with other artists with reliably beautiful results; witness the brace of albums he’s recorded with the freewheelin’ Ryley Walker, Land Of Plenty and Spiderbeetlebee. There was 2019’s darker two-hander with cellist Katinka Klein, …
Premiere: Cormac Russell releases new track, Talkin’ Corona Blues
Canadian born but Irish raised singer songwriter Cormac Russell released his third album Regicide last May, gaining much admiring glances, and ahead of his next album ‘Ghost Town’, out this coming May, he’s releasing a new single, Talkin’ Corona Blues, and we’re delighted to be able to premiere it right here on Backseat Mafia today. …
SEE: Indigo Sparke – ‘Everything Everything’: astonishing spectral folk
IF MARISSA NADLER, Aldous Harding, Joanna Newsom, Vashti Bunyan light up your world with otherworldly folk fire – and if they don’t, then maybe we can’t be friends after all – then you really need to take a seat right this minute, and be astonished by Australian folk artist Indigo Sparke, who’s recently inked on …
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 …
Premiere: Samana release All One Breath
Described by Elbow frontman Guy Garvey as his ‘Artist of the Year’ on his 6music show, Welsh duo Samana (aka Rebecca Rose Harris and Franklin Mockett) have released a new single All One Breath, which we’re absolutely delighted to premiere right here on Backseat Mafia this morning. Describing the track as “a rumination of our interrelations …
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