Devendra Banhart is no stranger to anyone who reads these pages. Flying Wig sees the Houston-born musician and songwriter releasing his 11th album into the wild. He is 21 years deep into a recording career and shows no slowing down…
Author: Mark Buckley
Album | Gregory Alan Isakov – Appaloosa Bones
Gregory Alan Isakov is one talented fellow. He writes bruising songs, sings in a weathered voice and has a knack for writing a melody that stays with you for a long time. He also has heart, a deep lying sense…
Album | Shirley Collins – Archangel Hill
Every generation of the Collins family has been carved from the hills of the South Downs, and it is those hills that act as a silent partner and accompaniment for Archangel Hill, the third album that folk queen Shirley Collins…
Album | Arborist – An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeros
“Sometimes these are the best dreams I’ve ever had/Like a sparkle of crystals in the palm of my hand”. From the opening lines of Arborist’s third album, we are welcomed into a world observed from a different angle. Arborist, aka Mark McCambridge,…
Album | Lucy Farrell – We Are Only Sound
Lucy Farrell has been a name on the English folk circuit for a number of years, duetting with Jonny Kearney for a while and gaining acclaim in supporting slots or the likes of The Unthanks and Bellowhead. After winning the…
Album | Josienne Clarke – Onliness (Songs of Solitude & Singularity)
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” So begins L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel The Go-Between, but it could easily apply to this wondrous reclamation of a past that had almost been considered lost forever. The story…
Album | Signe Marie Rustad – Particles of Faith
It’s been over a decade since Signe Marie Rustad first introduced her talents to the world, though it wasn’t until her third album, When Words Flow Freely, that the wider public became fully aware of the sheer scope of that…
Album | MF Tomlinson – We Are Still Wild Horses
During the wild and scary days of January 2021, with everyone trapped and isolated from one another, Australian-born London-based songwriter MF Tomlinson suddenly realised how lonely he was and “how much I needed to make some music”. From the ashes…
Album | Meg Baird – Furling
Meg Baird first entered my life whilst still a member of psychedelic folk rockers Espers, when she released her solo album Dear Companion back in 2007. She also records with her sister Laura as the wildly originally monikered The Baird…
James Yorkston, Nina Persson and The Second Hand Orchestra – The Great White Sea Eagle
This follow up to The Wide, Wide River didn’t start life meaning to be a sequel to anything. James Yorkston – the now veteran of 10 or so albums, plus collaborations and books – found himself in early 2021 sitting…