Every generation of the Collins family has been carved from the hills of the South Downs, and it is those hills that act as a silent partner and accompaniment for Archangel Hill, the third album that folk queen Shirley Collins…
Ghosts seem to haunt every second of Hannah Rose Platt’s Deathbed Confessions. Inhabiting a widescreen wonderland, Platt creates a landscape filled with both the horror and humor that haunts listeners. Her voice, a surprisingly flexible instrument, shades these recordings in…
Residing in a neighborhood where Captain Beefheart and 70s AM radio not only coexist but share the same turntable, Tim Rutili’s band Califone examines the strange landscape of villagers. It is, to say the least, an interesting trip, one where…
Ceremony seems to suggest formality, yet Tiny Ruins new album is far less formal than the title suggests. Hollie Fullbrook wrote the album during walks with her dogs along the turbulent landscape of “Old Murky” – Tāmaki Makaurau’s (aka Auckland’s)…
“Sometimes these are the best dreams I’ve ever had/Like a sparkle of crystals in the palm of my hand”. From the opening lines of Arborist’s third album, we are welcomed into a world observed from a different angle. Arborist, aka Mark McCambridge,…
Lucy Farrell has been a name on the English folk circuit for a number of years, duetting with Jonny Kearney for a while and gaining acclaim in supporting slots or the likes of The Unthanks and Bellowhead. After winning the…
Esther Rose has lived a bit of a nomadic existence, and now living in Santa Fe, after stays in Columbiaville, Michigan; and New Orleans, Safe to Run suggests that trading places has had a certain appeal. It’s as if she…
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” So begins L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel The Go-Between, but it could easily apply to this wondrous reclamation of a past that had almost been considered lost forever. The story…
Sometimes things just don’t fit. Angel Olsen had that problem with ‘Nothing’s Free’, the first track from her new EP, Forever Means. Soulful in a way that the other songs on Big Time weren’t, it became obvious it wouldn’t make…
Creating one of the densest openings a song has ever had, The New Pornographers take ‘Really, Really Light’ from Continue as a Guest and rather than sounding soft and reflective they almost sound like Electric Light Orchestra. Everything jangles and…