A debut offering from Mutual Benefit – a loose collective of musical collaborators surrounding frontman Jordan Lee, with no fixed lineup – Love’s Crushing Diamond nevertheless seems to have a cohesive vision, circling from beginning to end. The record opens with ‘Strong…
There’s something about great music that seems to combine the earthly and the earthy with something a bit more ethereal. A truly great track can be as close as we heathens get to a religious experience. And while Samantha Crain…
Icelandic folk-star Asgeir’s In the Silence sees a magical combination of acoustic folk and electro-pop, blending into a distinct style, which, while drawing heavily on influences from other mainstream alt-folk acts, notably Bon Iver and Mumford and Sons, finds its…
I Break Horses’s debut record, Hearts, was one of the best records of 2011. It frequently appeared on end of year lists around the globe, and the dark electronic pop music which seeped through the veins of the album produced…
Initially a solo project headed up by Dave Hosking (vocals) in 2008, this indie quintet has grown to become what is now ‘Boy & Bear‘. Having developed a reputation of Australia’s very own ‘Mumford and Sons’, Boy & Bear have wowed…
For your first listen to the long-awaited second album from this Californian group, I seriously suggest you make time, plug in some seriously good speakers and allow yourself to just listen. In other words, do not ‘make do’ with some…
It may be hard to believe but Stephen Malkmus has now made more albums on his own or with his band, the Jicks, than he did with Pavement during their early 90’s heyday (For the record, this is his 6th…
Sumie’s eponymous new album shows off an array of haunting melodies, her voice floating on top of intricate trance-inducing broken guitar chords. An exercise in the stripped down, most of the tracks feature only her vocals and guitar, with occasional…
You might expect When We Lived in the Crook of a Tree to be a collection of winsome, woolly songs about treehouses. Nope. The first words are: “There once grew a tree, ten flimsy branches on it, that used to…
Gary Stewart, for those who may not know, is the bassist in For Folk’s Sake favourites Ellen and the Escapades, and this is his latest collection of songs recorded under his own name and released independently way back in the…