Of the many elements Blair Dunlop has got right with What Still Survives, the award-winning British singer songwriters sixth full-length album, is the backbone of the sound. Bob Dylan was trying to describe something like this back in 1966 when he settled, aptly, on the phrase ‘wild mercury’. I cannot hope to improve upon that description. Still, I will, all the same, say that, aided by Ian Grimble on production duties, the combination of acoustic and electric guitars, drums and bass, with frequent embellishments by Hammond organ, pedal steel and violins, pretty much lays out a musical toolkit that can conjure the widest possible range of emotional responses. Blair has put himself and his latest batch of original songs, mostly written solo with the odd co-credit to…
Category: folk-rock
The templates and aesthetic he draws from on his third album are about as old as the concept of popular music itself, channelling the canyons around Los Angeles, top pickers in 1960s Nashville studios, and smoke-filled Greenwich Village folk clubs. Assisted on some tracks by co-producer Jonathan Wilson, who knows a thing or two himself about reviving the glory days of West Coast swoon, the LA-based Palestinian–American musician reaches for new levels of emotional resonance with an authority that instantly shuts down claims of derivative recycling.
Granted, we’ve been here before: Burton’s deceptively simple songs are ultimately folk songs, occasionally tinged with country, at times channelled through classic rock…
While Jonathan Something (aka Jonathan Searles) has not gone full Nashville on his latest effort, One More Lonesome Cowboy Song, there is no mistaking the cosmic country influences spread across the record.
Beyond the cowboy-centric title and album art, his latest draws on folks like Gram Parsons and features impressive acoustic guitar fingerpicking throughout the seven songs. There have been elements of the genre in his past music, but One More Lonesome Cowboy Song is a complete musical departure from his last record, which was steeped in ’80s pop synthesizers, as well as other dives into garage rock and sample-heavy soul.
This record opens on “Country Rose,” sounding a bit like Harry Nilsson wielding an acoustic…
The Felice Brothers is celebrated in the album Felice County Fair, a tribute album exploring and reimagining the band’s back catalogue, released via Free Flight Records/Sun Mountain Records. “A couple of years ago, a friend and advocate of the band named Brandy Schultz called us with a vision to create a tribute record to our band and wanted to ask for our blessing,” comments Ian Felice in a note to fans. “Brandy is a uniquely powerful force of nature who usually has the ingredients to make margaritas in a cooler in her car. It’s two years later now, and somehow, by her sheer will and the devotion of many wonderful musicians and producers, her vision has become a reality. The fact that so many artists have contributed to this project simply out of a love for our music…
Brighton folk-rockers Levellers have been one of Britain’s most enduring and best-loved bands for nearly 40 years. And part of that incredible success has been built on the timeless anthems that comprised their platinum-selling, second album Levelling the Land, which celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2026.
Recorded at Ridge Farm studios in Surrey over the summer of 1991, it was produced by Al Scott, who was charged with translating the band’s incendiary live performances into something more refined within the recording environment. Featuring the huge hit singles ‘One Way’, ‘15 Years’ and ‘Far From Home’, Levelling The Land redefined the UK’s musical landscape providing the soundtrack for a society fed up with the twin…
Dave Alvin, singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, author, has touched so many forms of American music that it can be daunting to peg one’s favorite part of his career. Even today, with his psychedelic jam band The Third Mind, he is exploring jazz and early ’60s folk music. Yet the pure Americana audience likely gravitates to his mid-’90s period, when he released two straightforward acoustic folk albums and a third that was close to the same. The first, King of California (1994), a mix of covers and originals, shocked many who had long since labeled Alvin a ferocious rocker.
Four years later came Blackjack David, arguably when Alvin really found his vocal and songwriting chops. In 2000, he won a Grammy for traditional folk songs, Public Domain…
It doesn’t seem two years since the last Richard Thompson album – but the man who flew furthest from Fairport Convention while Sandy Denny sadly fell to earth, still turns out quality fare. And this is his best for some while.
He’s still working his way through a Covid backlog of songs and, having then invested in a home studio, now supplies detailed demos to his band, the core of which remains bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Michael Jerome. Engineer James Frazee, who’s worked with Thompson’s son Teddy, earns a co-production credit, though whether this heralds a lengthy Mitchell Froom-like partnership remains to be seen.
A brass section is employed at intervals, evoking memories of I Want to See the Bright…
Jonathan Personne is the solo alias of Jonathan Robert, a Montreal-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontman for Sub Pop band Corridor. His fifth album under the alias is a lovely sweet of dreamy psych-pop with Jonathan largely singing in French atop his warm, lush, welcoming arrangements.
Corridor bandleader Jonathan Personne’s solo record Nouveau Monde was one of the must-hear Canadian albums from 2025, and now he’s back with even more new material — Répertoire arrives via Bonsound. Marking his fifth album in seven years, Personne blends dreamy pop with yacht rock textures as he reflects on the highs and lows of being a professional musician and his ever-evolving relationship with music.
Singer, songwriter, humanitarian, activist, poet, philosopher, artist… as the music legend Labi Siffre prepares to release his first album of new music in 28 years, Demon are making his stellar catalogue available again as vinyl reissues and 3CD sets.
1972-1973 brings together Labi’s third and fourth studio albums – ‘Crying Laughing Loving Lying’, the follow-up ‘For The Children’ plus a bonus disc of B-sides and rarities originally featured on the now-deleted ’My Song’ box set from 2020. It comes in Deluxe 7”-sized packaging with a reversable front sleeve. ‘Crying Laughing Loving Lying’ from 1972 is traditionally seen as the album that propelled Labi into the limelight with the UK Top 20 hit ‘It Must Be Love’ – covered to memorable effect by Madness in 1982 where it reached No. 4 in the singles chart.
A quiet celebration. A legendary return. Paul Simon brings his critically acclaimed and GRAMMY-nominated Seven Psalms to life in this first-ever live performance of the complete piece for his Quiet Celebration, an intimate evening spanning his vast career and celebrating new arrangements of timeless classics, deep cuts, and new musical discoveries. Inspired to perform again, Simon began work rehearsing and figuring out how he could bring ‘Seven Psalms’ to the stage. His transformation of the movements for live performance gave way to all-new renditions of some of his most cherished songs and a deep desire to bring these contemplative and intricate pieces to audiences. A Quiet Celebration toured the US in small venues…
Not only outside the music industry but within its margins (much less frequently at its very core), there are those for whom music is one of several activities to pursue. It’s a question not only related to the increasing difficulty of living off music without a head start, but also to personal circumstances and lifestyle choices.
In the case of Wade Montpellier, he’s both a small-scale organic farmer by trade and the creative force behind his project, Mistaken for Wayne. However, he’s not alone in his musical efforts, as Mistaken For Wayne, the band, also benefits from the presence of Olivier Palkovits (lead guitar and backing vocals), Jonathan Danyliw (bass and backing vocals), Dylan Kelly (drums), and Matthew Wiewel (pedal steel).
The Suitcase Junket is a one-man band powered by guitarist and singer-songwriter Matt Lorenz, whose first album, Sever and Lift (2010), told the world that, among other things, dudes who make music simultaneously with a guitar and other contraptions are still around. Taking his moniker from the suitcase that serves as a kick drum and bench, Lorenz spent the 2010s steadily releasing blues and roots albums that reflected his solitary approach. His 2020 album, The End is New, found Lorenz in the company of producer Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) and others, sanding down some of the rough edges of his sound and filling in corners normally left empty. It was a critical success blunted by timing. COVID effectively shut down any hope of touring. Happily, Lorenz became a father…
Since 2012, Sam Sodomsky has quietly released lyrically elegant, musically sophisticated albums under the moniker The Bird Calls. His Bandcamp page has nearly three dozen releases, including singles, EPs, and full-length albums. If his latest record, Take Leave, is any indication, he’s not slowing down and is making his best music yet. Performed by Sodomsky and longtime collaborator Ryan Weiner, the songs on Take Leave are not only a culmination of this duo’s musical bona fides; they’re also all written by Sodomsky and take the listener on a journey informed by his vast musical tastes. In addition to his prolific recorded output, Sodomsky is also a veteran music journalist, and his songs (as well as the eclectic arrangements) carry the well-worn veneer of…
Melbourne-born, Berlin-based singer-songwriter Ned Collette collaborated with some notable names on his last release, 2024’s Our Other History, including Dirty Three’s Jim White and Mick Turner, Leah Senior and The Necks’ Chris Abrahams. The collaborations continue on his new album, Mixed Light, with Senior and Abrahams once again, plus long-term band members Joe Talia (drums) and Ben Bourke (bass).
Collette is back on Melbourne label It Records, who put out 2018’s masterful Old Chestnut, after releasing Our Other History on Ryan Davis’s Sophomore Lounge. Mixed Light feels decidedly more coherent than its predecessor, moving adroitly between musical styles and coalescing into a deeply satisfying album.
…Lily Seabird’s third full-length, Lightspheres On Their Way, defies simple categorization. It’s the kind of record that breathes and moves to a rhythm all its own. It adopts a unique mythology (the idea of “lightspheres”), allows its songs to pick their own pain, and wonders and reckons in its own language and time about the deeply personal in a way that feels strikingly universal.
A warm, humming harmonium blows through opener “The Pulley,” soft-strummed guitars and Seabird’s searching voice are all that tether the skies to the ground. “Am I still allowed to pray / Even if I don’t believe anymore?” she asks on high. It’s the type of wonder that makes us poke at the stars as children; as adults, the questions have a way of following us back down…
Cat Stevens’ Buddha and the Chocolate Box, originally released in 1974, is the latest title in the singer-songwriter’s venerable cat-o-log to get the remastered reissue treatment. One of Yusuf’s four consecutive LPs to reach the top three in both the United States and Great Britain and his sixth A&M release overall, Buddha returns September 4 on CD, vinyl, and digital formats.
In many respects, Buddha and the Chocolate Box was a homecoming for Stevens. After retreating to Jamaica to self-produce the R&B-influenced Foreigner (also reissued as part of the Cat-o-Log series), he returned to old colleagues Paul Samwell-Smith and Alun Davies (producer and acoustic guitarist, respectively) to recapture the feel of their earlier efforts together.
The dawn of the British folk revival broke in 1965 when Bert Jansch’s “folk-baroque” finger style revolutionised tradition, providing the early morning light for a burgeoning psychedelic scene which, by 1972 had traveled from folk clubs to the high-concept landscapes of progressive rock, exemplified by the Eastern-tinged sitar-guitar on Yes’s ‘Siberian Khatru’.
Western artists utilised Eastern forms as a new musical bedrock. The Byrds transitioned from folk-rock into the uncharted territory of ‘Eight Miles High’, a track widely cited as the first true U.S. “Raga Rock” single. Driven by Roger McGuinn’s solos – inspired by Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane – it proved pop could embrace complex modal structures. Similarly, The Yardbirds’…
Ian Prowse has been making music for more than 30 years, first with indie band Pele, then forming the band Amsterdam in 1999, and now releasing albums under his own name. Having recently been inducted into the Liverpool Legends Hall of Fame, No Names, his latest release, finds him involving other similarly engaged souls such as Elvis Costello, Steve Wickham, and Damien Dempsey.
The first thing to note is the music is for the most part fantastic. Acoustic guitars jangle forcefully, Prowse’s vocals are impassioned, and there is frequently a joyous uplift to the melodies that call for audience participation. The arrangements are full of energy, but also nuance and subtlety. Kicking off with a slow arpeggio, opener ‘To the Letter’ soon takes flight into…