Folk music doesn’t simply exist. It constantly reinvents its self, creating something both old and new at the same time. Bonny Light Horseman – the group and the album created by Anais Mitchell, the singer/songwriter behind the Tony winning Hadestown;…
Sometimes what you hear is wrong, yet so right that it inhabits its own place created out of thin air. Such is the case with the final song and title track of Land of No Junction by Aoife Ness Frances. “Take…
Boa Morte means the good death in Portuguese, which is somehow fitting for a band that has released just three albums since their formation in 1998. Yet instead of a death wish they just want to make their music their…
Over the years Vetiver have been a bit of a chameleon. There was a slightly Fleetwood Mac-ish tinge to Complete Strangers. Four years down the line, Up On High is a very different beast, much more of an acoustic outing…
Scotland’s Twelfth Day inhabit a special place. Catriona Price and Esther Swift are classically trained musicians, yet in their band there is a focus on improvisation one rarely sees. The opportunity to question these women and introduce their newest track…
Sometimes it feels as if James McArthur and The Head Gardeners are being set up to take the fall if the resurgence of folk music doesn’t completely encompass the British Isles. Which would be a shame since Intergalactic Sailor is…
‘Shut Up Kiss Me’ shaped the summer soundtrack of 2016, so much so that it’s easy to forget that Angel Olsen marches to a beat only she can hear. Following a path that doesn’t stick to the straight and narrow, she…
Listening to Hiss Golden Messenger is like going to church. You don’t always hear what you want, but you hear what you need. Terms Of Surrender is no exception. This new collection of ten tunes comes after M. C. Taylor…
Joan Shelley tends to do things a little differently. Like The River Loves The Sea was recorded in Reykjavik, Iceland; a world away from her home near Louisville, Kentucky. Despite being thousands of miles from the world she knows, being…
Cross-pollination creates new hybrids. In the case of I See Hawks In L.A., meeting up with Liverpool’s The Good Intentions at a house party in the Sierra Madre foothills was an auspicious beginning. Charming English accents captivated the Hawks as…