Was anyone aware that prog-bluegrass-folk existed? And that it could be pulled off not just competently, but thrillingly? Neither was I until I gave The Phosphorescent Blues, Punch Brothers’ fourth album, a spin. A 10-minute opener may not be what…
Vincent Colbert’s debut release is a scorched beauty, a lovely mixture of melody, a fragile yet authoritative voice and astute summing up of the uncertainties of life. The Ann-Arbor based singer-songwriter worked on these five tracks while adjusting to life…
Jib Kidder is the pseudonym of Sean Schuster-Craig, a ‘pop collagist’ signed to Domino’s ‘Weird World’ label. A visual and video artist who describes his music as another form of collage, his playful, psychedelic sound lies somewhere between Dirty Projectors and The Flaming…
Jessica Pratt has created her own strange folk wonderland on her second record. With shades of Nick Drake, and gloomy beguiling spells, there is a sound and songs here to cement the creator’s reputation as a dark folk goddess. It’s…
The deep scar down the centre of Björk’s chest on the cover says plenty about the highly personal, painful content of Vulnicura. It is the hole through which her heart was torn out, through which all the pain and anguish…
Coming only a few months later, Absent Fathers is the flip side to Earle’s last record Single Mothers. Consider it a double album released in two parts. It’s a cracker as well, running in at just over half an hour.…
High hopes were held for this debut from Natalie Prass. The first songs we heard hinted at something of great potential and wonder, inspiring a sense of nostalgia for past music (as seems to be becoming a trend for Spacebomb…
Two years after the 2010 demise of his band Supergrass, Gaz Coombes brought us his debut Here Come The Bombs, a record which moved into his own head space in a way that was never really possible with Supergrass, while…
The Decemberists might be pushed to beat their own mid-00s output, but this is a band that has stayed true to their roots and continue to make compelling folk music. Their new record comes exactly four years since The King…
Diagrams is the latest project of Sam Genders, previously of Tunng, but for me Chromatics is sharper and more interesting than Tunng’s more diffuse work. ‘Phantom Power’ starts out jaunty, gently articulate, all Belle-&-Sebastian-eqsue, rattling along like a red bicycle with a bell…