The Cambridge Folk Festival is not renowned for its sexiness. Beards? Yes. Beer bellies? Check. Family fun, funny hats and frolics in the mud. But sexiness? Not so much. So imagine my surprise when I arrived on Thursday afternoon to…
Category: Reviews
Album | The Unthanks with Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band – Diversions vol. 2
The band is incredibly versatile, from march music offset with sparse, mournful arrangements on the beautiful ‘Trimdon Grange Explosion’, to near classical arrangements on the Prokofiev-reminiscent ‘My Lagan Love’ and the James Bond pyrotechnics in the new rendition of ‘Queen of Hearts’. In its tones and timbre, every track is as reassuringly traditional as logs on a fireplace, but they crackle with a new wit in combinations that, without contradiction, show British folk – and brass band music – at its most innovative.
Live | Eugene McGuinness @ The Lexington, London, 26th June 2012
Eugene McGuinness had achieved lots of things before we came to know about him when ‘Lion’ was added to the 6Music playlists. Apologies for us being a little behind the times on this one, though it seems we’ve rocked up…
Festivals | Cambridge Folk Festival – Part Une
Thursday sees the equivalent of a religious holiday for the folk world kick off as the Cambridge Folk Festival opens for its 48th year. One of the longest-running in the UK, the CFF was first held in 1965 and featured…
Album | Family Band – Grace & Lies
In their sophomore record, Grace & Lies, Family Band juxtapose two fundamentally opposing and paradoxical concepts, and intertwine them to form a being that thrums with life’s most profound questions. The album begins with the unsettlingly with ‘Night Song’, centred…
Singles Round-up | Dog Is Dead, Alberta Cross, Alexander Wolfe, Tashaki Miyaki, James Canty & Church School
Dog is Dead – Glockenspiel Song When I was first this track I did a double take; wasn’t this quirky, upbeat pop number from Nottingham was released two years ago? It turns out I was right – after releasing ‘Glockenspiel…
EP | Bonnie Prince Billy – Now Here’s My Plan
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if modern songs were given the kind of interpretative renditions born by traditional music – if more cover versions consciously shaped meaning, like Bellowhead, rather than merely adapting style, like the Mystery…
EP | WAGWAK – The Way To Drive Into The Arabian Sunset
Made up of singer-guitarist Daehyun Kim and madcap multi-instrumentalist Sangyoung Cho, WAGWAK’s curious moniker is an acronym of We Aren’t Gay, We Are Korean, after they were repeatedly mistaken for a couple. Self-professed disciples of FFS favourites Slow Club, Mumford…
Album | Vanessa Peters – The Burn, The Truth, The Lies
It is hard to believe that Vanessa Peters is on album number seven, and after the much-acclaimed Christmas album released last year, many have been waiting on tenterhooks to see what Peters has got up her sleeve next. Well, rest-assured,…
Album | Moulettes – The Bear’s Revenge
From the opening notes of the frantic opening single, Sing Unto Me, the Moulettes sophomore release The Bear’ Revenge sweeps you up into a world of traditional sounds made suddenly fresh. Georgina Leach’s stunning violin playing, Hannah Miller’s cello, banjos,…