The Cambridge Folk Festival is not renowned for its sexiness. Beards? Yes. Beer bellies? Check. Family fun, funny hats and frolics in the mud. But sexiness? Not so much. So imagine my surprise when I arrived on Thursday afternoon to…
Interview | Filling time with Piano Magic’s Glen Johnson
For a band that have been going since 1996, released 11 albums and scored the soundtrack for a film, you might be forgiven for never having heard of Piano Magic. Initially conceived as a purely studio project, an initial disinclination…
Album | Lianne La Havas – Is Your Love Big Enough
A gorgeous voice, fresh-faced good looks, a trailor load of youthful exuberance and an original songwriter to boot. The myriad of Cowell-sponsored TV talent shows could run for the next hundred years without turning up a little star like Lianne…
Interview | Introducing….Correatown
Los Angeles-based Angela Correa, aka Correatown, describes her music as a boozy bourbon pecan pie. Debut album, Spark. Burn. Fade, was certainly a sweet, leisurely, folk-pop treat that put us in mind of raindrops on mittens and roses on kittens…
EP | Andrew Bird – Give it Away
If you haven’t watched the video for ‘Give it Away’, the lead track on Andrew Bird’s most recent EP of the same name, do it now. Immediately. It features a human piñata at a 1950’s-style kids birthday party, and a…
Album | The Unthanks with Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band – Diversions vol. 2
The band is incredibly versatile, from march music offset with sparse, mournful arrangements on the beautiful ‘Trimdon Grange Explosion’, to near classical arrangements on the Prokofiev-reminiscent ‘My Lagan Love’ and the James Bond pyrotechnics in the new rendition of ‘Queen of Hearts’. In its tones and timbre, every track is as reassuringly traditional as logs on a fireplace, but they crackle with a new wit in combinations that, without contradiction, show British folk – and brass band music – at its most innovative.