The Christmas album comes with all sorts of pitfalls in which to fall headfirst or to stand in proudly, arms akimbo. Even the most earnest of performers can put out some jingly-jangly tune to suit the season of merriment. But…
Category: Records
Album | Vanessa Peters – The Christmas We Hoped For
At a time when every Tom, Dick and Harry are releasing a Christmas album (Tom, Dick and Harry probably being Michael Bublé, The Smurfs and Cliff Richard), it’s great to see the folk community getting in on the action this…
Album | Emmy The Great & Tim Wheeler – This Is Christmas
In a year with more full-length festive offerings than any in recent memory, there has still been something essentially ‘Christmassy’ missing. She & Him provided the Midnight Mass feeling – respectful, stately, something you can be sure your Gran will…
EP | Daughter – The Wild Youth
To say it’s been a busy year for Daughter would be a massive understatement. The release of The Wild Youth EP is her third release in a year (the first, a collection of demos may not be recognised as ‘official’,…
Album | Tiny Ruins – Some Were Meant For Sea
In 2008, Adelir Antonio de Carli, a Brazilian priest, launched himself off a cliff with 1,000 helium balloons and was never seen again. His story led Hollie Fullbrook to write the song ‘Priest With Balloons’, a lyric from which gives…
Album | My Sad Captains – Fight Less Win More
Stolen Recordings One suspects that Ed Wallis could feel lonely in a crowded room. While some musicians decamp, Bon Iver-style, to isolated woodland cabins to key into the creativity that isolation brings, Wallis decided to hole up in a borrowed…
EP | The Staves – Mexico
There’s something very woolly jumper about the Staves, as might be expected from graduates of the Liverpool School of Performing Arts. Your enjoyment of the sweet-toothed folk tunes that make up the Mexico EP will depend entirely on your tolerance for…
EP | Stealing Sheep – Noah And The Paper Moon
With their long drapes of hair and songs dotted with twangling loopy bits and swooping girl-trio harmonies, Stealing Sheep are a bit of a throwback to hippydom, but they have more than retro appeal going for them. Noah and the…
Album | Cass McCombs – Humor Risk
Humor Risk, the second Cass McCombs album to be released this year, juxtaposes itself against April’s Wit’s End; where the first was harrowing and gloomy, this is, at times, surprisingly buoyant and hopeful. And as the album’s title suggests, Cass…
Album | Dan Michaelson – Sudden Fiction
Lord knows where the Coastguards disappeared to. He had them earlier this year, tumbling out low musical rumblings in the tunnels beneath Charing Cross station. He kept them by his side for the first two albums, the devastatingly sad Saltwater…