Folk
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, …
Live Review: Matt Berry and The Maypoles / Xylaroo – The Foundry, 26.10.2016
From the inside, The Foundry is a rather anonymous looking venue, tucked away in the bowels of Sheffield University. On the upside, the drinks are cheap (£2.25 for an orange J20 and a lime and soda), the sound is good and some great acts play there. Tonight, with my usual gig companion at home ill, …
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 …
Classic Album: Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited
Imagine the shock of hearing Highway 61 Revisited the first time in the mid 60s. You’re a Bob Dylan fan, you like his politicised songwriting as it fit in neatly with your ideals and opinions. Sure his material has become slightly less political over recent albums, but he’s still a great songwriter. You can even …
Album Review: GOAT – Requiem
Listening to GOAT’s new epic album Requiem one gets the feeling of coming across some strange, acid-drenched dance party in the Shire. Big-footed hobbits drinking goblets of homemade rastleberry wine as they succumb to the psilocybin-fueled hallucinations as the sounds of GOAT echo through Middle Earth. Requiem could also pass for the soundtrack to a …
Meet: Hannah Peel on her new album ‘Awake But Always Dreaming’, plus new show details
Hannah Peel, 2/3rds of Magnetic North and acclaimed singer songwriter, has released one of the years most lovely, intimate, emotional and beautiful records of the year in Awake but always dreaming, which came out late last month. Busy recording and performing in her own right and collaborating with an array of artists, she’s just announced …
See: Lanterns on the lake reveal video for ‘The Crawl’, plus your dates
Lanterns On The Lake have been quiet of late, however, they’ve seen fit to furnish us with this sumptuous video for ‘The Crawl’, one of the stand out tracks from recent album ‘Beings’. As singer Hazel puts it; “The Crawl is an invitation to someone. It’s about a magic escapism that transcends the shallow everyday …
See: Shirley Collins releases video for Death And The Lady
To go 38 years without releasing an album might be considered lackadaisical. But “Lodestar” from Shirley Collins beats even Vashti Bunyan for discography gaps. Now revealed from that record is the video for “Death and the Lady” – a creepy pastoral view of Britain featuring green fields, horses, but then also charnel houses, skulls and …
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 …