If ever we need Mavis Staples, it’s now. The 86-year-old has been there, done that, and is still standing, or at least according to her new album’s cover, sitting, hands-crossed at the table. Maybe a little less steady in the voice and…
After his multi-coloured ‘Manchester’ album trilogy – full of mishaps, misturns and superbly skewed songwriting – came BC Camplight’s break-up record, 2023’s The Last Rotation of Earth. The title and black-and-white photographic cover of its follow-up suggests seriousness, Brian Christinzio staring at…
Ten albums is a long time in rock n’ roll, and My Morning Jacket have been on quite a trip since their birth in Louisville in the early 2000s. There’s been the colourful abandon of critics’ hit Z (2005), the unexpected Prince-meets-Cameo…
Grandaddy main man Jason Lytle has always had a country heart, notwithstanding the skateboarding and DIY punk origins of his band’s taped-together indie rock. Their sixth album is the one on which Lytle gives in to pedal steel and the…
Recently struggling to sleep, I turned to Convocations – Sufjan Stevens’ 2021 49-track instrumental album, written in the wake of his father’s death. I was taken aback by this subtly inventive two-and-a-half hour, five-part song cycle. It came only one…
There’s an air of playful, potential finality to Bruce Cockburn’s 38th studio album. It’s his first LP proper since 2017’s Bone On Bone, if you don’t include 2019’s instrumental Crowing Ignites. The influential Canadian troubadour may be a cult concern on our…
Josh Rouse has always been pretty prolific but it seems that lockdown proved a particularly fertile period for the Nebraskan songwriter. Following one of the most delightful Christmas albums of recent years (The Holiday Sounds Of Josh Rouse), it led to last year’s electronic…
For his second solo album since time was called on Sheffield’s Slow Club, Charles Watson seems in a bucolic mood. Gone are the woozy layers of 2018’s Now That I’m A River, replaced by a bright straight-forwardness. Yes is a perfect…
Conor O’Brien’s gradual inching from his acoustic folk roots since 2010’s Mercury-nominated debut Becoming A Jackal is fully realised in his kaleidoscopic fifth studio album. Recorded with a band pre-pandemic, it’s intriguing to wonder how much Fever Dreams morphed into its lysergic final shapes…
Inspired by the ancient Mount Paektu, Gruff Rhys’ latest solo album finds him exploring fertile territory while remaining both familiar and fresh. The Super Furries’ frontman has ploughed a rich and varied seam under his own steam for 15 years. Seeking…