One day, will Saintseneca’s new record, Highwallow & Supermoon Songs, do for another worn-down, listless folk musician what painting did for bandleader Zac Little? Toward the end of the 2010s, Little suffered a prolonged period of creative doldrums, thus explaining the seven years or so it took his band to follow up Pillar of Na. Touring and recording and writing and practicing all take a toll; even artists need time to fill their cups, contrary to preconceptions that art is easy and those who make it their vocation are blessed with ever-flowing goblets. (This is very much not the case, for artists as well as for arts and culture critics. We all identify as “tired.”)
It fits that Little plugged into painting to recharge his spirit. Highwallow & Supermoon Songs…
Category: folk
…CD release featuring 5 bonus tracks.
For nearly three decades, Boston’s Dropkick Murphys have brought a rowdy, beery, joyously disreputable form of Celtic punk to the masses. When they arrived on the national scene in the late ’90s, the Murphys were one of many extremely fun niche bands on Rancid’s Hellcat imprint. But the Murphys toured hard and made irresistible ragers, and they eventually transcended their background, finding their way to audiences far outside their subculture. In 2005, for instance, they set some unused archival Woody Guthrie words to stomping, ominous, irresistible music. A year later, Martin Scorsese used “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” the resulting song, in a couple of his scenes from his Oscar-winning Boston crime epic…
There’s a quiet hum of excitement about Merlyn Driver’s full-length debut, and with good reason. Since his first EP (This Is the Corner of a Larger Field, 2017), releases have been thin on the ground. His most notable project to date is the 2022 release Simmerdim: Curlew Sounds, a collaborative album curated and produced by Driver, featuring a vast array of talent from the world of folk music and beyond. It marked him out as one of the genre’s free thinkers, immersed in tradition yet willing to experiment, attuned to the ambience of the natural world yet always on hand with a winning melody.
That early EP saw Driver set out his stall as a kind of latter-day Nick Drake, where understated and sensitive songwriting went hand in hand…
Banjoists Steve Martin and Alison Brown have called up a boatload of friends to guest on their album. The list includes Jackson Browne, Vince Gill, the Indigo Girls, Tim O’Brien, Jason Mraz, and Della Mae. They open with a banjo duet, ‘Friend of Mine,’ which has a timeless quality to it. The instruments sparkle, and they mesh together so that in places it sounds like a single player.
From there, the album quickly goes off piste with songs like the Bossa Nova-influenced ‘Michael’, which features Aoife O’Donovan and Sarah Jarosz. ‘Dear Time’ with Jackson Browne and Jeff Hanna highlights Martin’s comment that “with the banjo, there are so many styles you can work with, but Alison and I both have an ear for its more melodic, melancholy aspect.”
It’s always interesting to see where the next Imaginational Anthem compilation will take us, and this fourteenth addition (in time for Tompkins Square’s twentieth anniversary) has hopped us over to one of the traditional music hubs of the world to show us some of the instrumental guitar talent operating in Ireland.
Cian Nugent has his hand on the curating tiller and has chosen nine other tracks to sandwich his own little number, the lovely ‘I am Asleep and do not Wake Me’, a traditional Irish tune that he learned from a harp arrangement. As you would expect from Cian, the playing here on solo acoustic is finely nuanced and unshowy, with a couple of softly audible knocks on the body giving the sound an intimate feel.
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Clannad’s 1985 album, Macalla (meaning “Echo” in Irish) and newly remastered by Phil Kinrade at Air Studios. This ninth studio album became their first international success and marked a significant point in the band’s career, showcasing a blend of their traditional Irish folk roots with a more mainstream, pop-influenced sound.
Building on the momentum from previous successes like “Theme from Harry’s Game” (1982), which gained international attention and was even used by U2 as concert outro music, and their award-winning soundtrack for the TV series “Robin of Sherwood” (released as the album Legend in 1984), Clannad was poised for a breakthrough in markets like America.
…Born and raised in Toronto’s East End, singer-songwriter Jerry Leger has built up a remarkable body of work over the last two decades, culminating in fourteen studio albums that have seen collaborations with americana icons such as Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins and Grammy winner Mark Howard.
Earlier this year, Leger released a solo album entitled Lucky Streak: Latent Lounge, Live from the Hanger, produced by Timmins at his studio, ‘The Hanger’ in Toronto, where he revisited a selection of his back catalogue and gave them a more modern feel. This time around, he is reunited with his band and, taking advantage of a short break whilst touring Europe, stopped off at Cologne’s historic Maarweg Studio to…
…An expanded reissue of their stellar “Acoustic Junk” (2009) record, this album features five new acoustic recordings alongside five tracks from the original album — three of which have been remixed for this compilation.
Known for their haunting melodies and introspective songwriting, the band’s acoustic arrangements on this collection showcase the raw beauty and emotional depth that have been at the centre of their individual sound since their inception. The band comprises Margo Timmins (vocals), Michael Timmins (guitar), Jeff Bird (mandolin, harmonica, bass, percussion), Andy Maize (backup vocals), Josh Finlayson (banjo), and Jaro Czerwinec (accordion). The album was produced, partially recorded, and…
After seven years of unprecedented success following 2018’s By the Way, I Forgive You, 2021’s In These Silent Days, her recent collaborations with Elton John, Joni Mitchell and increasing mainstream recognition — Brandi Carlile draws a line in the sand, returning with an album that feels like an extended conversation with mortality, love, and the fundamental human need for connection.
Returning to Myself finds the singer-songwriter at her most philosophically engaged, wrestling with the finite nature of existence while celebrating the messy beauty of interdependence. The title track establishes the album’s central paradox immediately. Despite its name suggesting solitary introspection, Carlile hints at co-dependency and togetherness.
The title of Charlie Kaplan’s latest album stems from an episode involving his father, who was being visited in the hospital by a longtime friend. When his friend laid his baseball cap on Charlie‘s father’s bed, the usually polite–but–superstitious elder Kaplan was abruptly shocked.
“In old cowboy movies,” he said, in a story recounted by Charlie himself in the press notes, “a hat on the bed is an omen, a premonition that someone will die”.
Indeed, A Hat Upon the Bed is a tribute to Kaplan’s father, who passed away in 2013, as well as to his son, born in 2025. This “fatherless decade” between those two events was a source of love and pain, which Kaplan has used as inspiration for this, perhaps his most personal and…
Mandolinist Ethan Setiawan’s latest album, Encyclopedia Mandolinnica, showcases the Indiana-born, Berklee School of Music graduate’s virtuosic skills in a series of duos and trios with colleagues, mentors and masters.
The 11-track recording kicks off with Setiawan trading riffs with mighty mandolinist Mike Marshall on a swinging fandango titled ‘Victoria’.
‘Blazing Star’ pairs Setiawan with Jacob Jolliff (Joy Kills Sorrow, Yonder Mountain String Band) in a showcase for the astonishingly deft, quick-fingered facility of today’s mandolin maestros.
On ‘Brothers and Sisters’, renowned classical mandolinist Caterina Lichtenberg (who also happens to be Marshall’s wife) joins Setiawan on a brilliantly composed and meticulously…
The Doldrums is the debut solo release from Canadian singer-songwriter Ellen Braun. She is based in Canmore, Alberta and is also a member of indie folk duo Trundled with Joe Shea.
Braun recorded the 10-song collection mostly live at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango with producer Howard Bilerman. The album features a full-band performance with Stef Schneider (percussion), Sage Reynolds (upright bass), Mike O’Brien (guitars), and Sarah Hiltz (vocals and keys) and the “Nashville” choir, comprising Hiltz, Stephanie Gagnon, Laura Newman, Babette Hayward, William Kuklis, and Joseph Shea.
Of the album’s title, Braun explains: “Someone once told me, ‘It’s not too late to change the name of your album’. Well, it is now, and…
There’s a marked crossover from Celtic folk music at the moment. The Mary Wallopers now fill major rooms, while the likes of Lankum and Kingfishr edge the genre into the mainstream. Leading this charge are Brògeal, mixing the similarly imbued folk-punk of The Pogues and The Dubliners with indie-rock grandeur. Emerging during COVID, the band have since played pub basements up and down the country, packed festival stages, and nailed some high-profile support slots.
Each song layers vivid images of the pubs and streets of their home town of Falkirk (‘Vicar Street Days’), and its people (‘Draw the Line’), making the record an immersive scrapbook of vignettes. But beneath the frenzied tales of beer-soaked nights runs a remarkably delicate…
Centred on themes of dreams and the supernatural, with their vintage guitars accompanied by just Jon Thorne on double bass, Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage‘s fifth album, The Strangers’ Share, sees a return to the single microphone intimacy of their debut.
Mingling original material with traditional and covers, Thorne’s bass notes and a gathering tempo guitar run opens the title track with Ben on lead which draws on author Kevin Crossley-Holland’s 1997 retelling of the East Anglian ecology-based folk tale about our relationship with the land wherein tiny beings with long arms, legs and tongues, who, clad in green and yellow, would repay offerings of grain and the like by making the buds open and helping with harvest.
Joni Mitchell‘s Hejira is the last in an astonishingly long run of top-notch studio albums dating back to her debut. Some vestiges of her old style remain here; “Song for Sharon” utilizes the static, pithy vocal harmonies from Ladies of the Canyon‘s “Woodstock,” “Refuge of the Roads” features woodwind touches reminiscent of those in “Barangrill” from For the Roses, and “Coyote” is a fast guitar-strummed number that has precedents as far back as Clouds‘ “Chelsea Morning.” But by and large, this release is the most overtly jazz-oriented of her career up to this point — hip and cool, but never smug or icy.
“Blue Motel Room” in particular is a prototypic slow jazz-club combo number, appropriately smooth, smoky, and languorous.
It seems difficult to believe that this is Rianne Downey’s debut album. Having stepped into some formidable shoes as Paul Heaton’s vocal foil at arenas and festivals across the country, Downey is now establishing herself as a singular vocalist in her own right. That talent is showcased across ten tracks which wear their heart on their sleeve and have an unmistakeably Scottish flavour.
It’s a polished album, though the lush strings never get in the way of Downey’s soaring vocals. Standout track ‘The Consequence of Love’ deals with difficult subject matter, without straying into self-pity. It has a clear echo of New Slang by noughties indie favourites The Shins, and like them you can imagine Downey’s music featuring in a pivotal scene of a heartfelt Hollywood flick.
Well, unless you are an aficionado, it would not be surprising if you had never heard of Alice di Micele. Reverse the Flow is her 18th album in a career going back nearly 40 years. Di Micele, who lives in Oregon, appears not to have particularly sought commercial success and her touring schedule has hardly touched these shores, yet her fan base has developed over the years based on her fine songwriting and her exceptional voice, a five-octave instrument that adds emotion and variety to many of her songs. She is typically categorised as folk/americana, predicated on her lyrical themes (anti-establishment, nature, the modern world, LGBTQ etc) but her vocal styling is so diverse that it is often wrapped in jazz or blues instrumentation, always empathetically surrounded…
Sister John have been about for a few years now so it is perhaps no surprise that there is much in the way of maturity to be found in the words and music that make up the fifteen songs of Don’t Worry, It’s Forever.
It would be easy, therefore, to regard this album as being a serious one. One that successfully combines melody and melancholy as part of this band’s musical recipe for emotional catharsis. One that injects elements of both fragility and heartfelt sentiment into a framework that many might regard as an indication that the inside has become the new outside even if Sister John – Amanda McKeown, Jonathan Lilley, Sophie Pragnell, and Heather Phillip – do so whilst sounding like they have just walked out of the mists of the past.
The trouble with being in two great bands at once is one is usually going to take precedence over the other, which means sometimes the smaller group has to bide their time. Such is the fate of the Autumn Defense, the superb indie pop band led by John Stirratt and Pat Sansone, both of whom are also members of Wilco. Being under the employment of Jeff Tweedy keeps them profitably busy, and after the Autumn Defense issued Fifth in 2014, it took Stirratt and Sansone eleven years to scare up the time to complete their sixth album, 2025’s Here and Nowhere. Thankfully, it was more than worth the wait. Stirratt and Sansone’s command of 1960’s baroque pop and 1970’s soft rock is truly remarkable, and with Here and Nowhere, they’ve fashioned an impressive…
Now ten albums into his solo career — while still keeping his day job as frontman for The Old 97’s — Rhett Miller delivers his most stripped-down and confessional work yet with A lifetime of riding by night.
This darker, more introspective tone can potentially be attributed to Miller’s recent gig teaching a songwriting class at Manhattan’s New School, asking his students to be vulnerable in their own writing. Regardless, there is a bare-it-all vulnerability that ties all these songs together. With his vocals, a strong, slightly nasally tenor, and acoustic guitar at the forefront of the near dozen songs here (plus a short prologue and interlude), the record is a pivot away from his last solo outing – 2022’s The Misfit, which leaned…