It’s taken Joe Pernice thirty years to release his first solo album, Sunny, I Was Wrong. Along the way he’s recorded with the Scud Mountain Boys, Pernice Brothers, Chappaquiddick Skyline, The New Mendicants and Roger Lion. None of which are…
Life sneaks up on you, and it has a tendency to hurt like hell. Yet amid the pain there are moments of unrelenting beauty, where you connect with another person and everything seems just right. Charlotte Cornfield’s sixth collection, Hurts…
Understanding the geography of the heart is no easy task. Mapping the peaks and valleys requires a skill and honesty that can leave writers grasping at straws. Which makes the case of Flutes & Low more remarkable. Lay Fallow captures…
One of the enduring qualities of folk music is that its roots grow deep and once ensnared in those roots they don’t let go. Maz O’Connor has always been under the sway of traditional music. Her fifth album coming after…
Once again, Bonnie “Prince” Billy can see a darkness. His new record We Are Together Again deals – as the accompanying announcement explains – with a “world with a diminishing horizon”, the result of human action which has reshaped the…
Sons of Town Hall are the most incredible band from the early 1900s recording today. Wearing tattered clothes from the period, they become characters in a drama that unfurls during every performance live or recorded. Transformed from Ben Parker and…
Although it was recorded at the same time as Light Verses in 2024, Iron and Wine’s Hen’s Teeth is in no way a retread. Darker nuances appear playing off the angles, creating visions of loving and living that exist in…
Grief can be magical. Dealing with it can consume, or it can inspire. There are no rules. Lucy Kitchen’s world turned upside down when her husband was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Writing songs became impossible. She took to writing…
Finding his own voice, Julia is a significant breakthrough for Ásgeir. The lyrics, for the first time, are totally his own. In the past his songs have been based on the poetry of his father, Einar Georg Einarsson, with English…
There’s an art to maintaining a low profile. Hirta (in the guise of Alistair Paxton) whose new album, Soft Peaks represents a major step forward, has been able to maintain a sort of relative obscurity while still being in the…