Featuring Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and more The Fiddle and the Drum brings together 5x Grammy winning soprano Renée Fleming and 19x Grammy-winning banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck for a celebration of Appalachian folk music.
Produced by Béla Fleck, the album mines a rich vein of America’s musical heritage, weaving the expressive depth of Fleming’s voice with the brilliance of Fleck’s banjo, backed by an all-star bluegrass line up and special guests including Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Mike Bub, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Sierra Hull, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Bryan Sutton.
Through mountain songs, haunting ballads, and folk hymns, The Fiddle and the Drum…
Category: folk
Dervish is a celebrated Irish traditional folk band from County Sligo, formed in 1989. Fronted by charismatic singer and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Jordan, the ensemble also includes accomplished players on flute, fiddle, guitar, accordion, and mandola, drawing deeply on the rich musical heritage of northwest Ireland. For more than three decades, they’ve become one of the most respected names in Irish music, known for their dynamic live performances and a repertoire that weaves traditional Irish music with songs by contemporary Irish songwriters. The BBC, which presented the band with a lifetime achievement award in 2019, has described Dervish as “an icon of Irish music,” and the group has represented Ireland on stages from Glastonbury to Rock in Rio.
Country boy-in-the-Big Apple, Arthur Russell does folk fusion with his own, peerless verve on a remastered edition of his evergreen 2008 retrospective.
One of the most fascinating, multifaceted, greatest artists of the late C.20th, Arthur Russell is variously known as a disco auteur, virtuoso avant-pop cellist-composer, and bard of the highest order, but maybe less so as a country crooner. Compiled and issued in 2008, Love Is Overtaking Me most ideally framed this lesser-covered aspect of his work with 21 songs recorded under his own name and as part of The Flying Hearts (with Peter Zummo, Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson, a.o.), plus in duo with Steven Hall as Turbo Sporty, The Flying Hearts, and Bright & Early.
Simon Joyner’s 2024 album Coyote Butterfly ranks among the most simultaneously beautiful and devastating documents of its kind, a painfully raw and autobiographical account of the untimely death of Joyner’s son Owen. Since the early ‘90s, Joyner has been one of independent music’s most authentically independent artists, and while his poetic songs have never shied away from difficult emotions, the depths of vulnerability and sorrow he found on Coyote Butterfly were even more searingly real than anything he’d made before. Even though the album focused on collecting the finite feelings of grief, it represented a place to honor these feelings rather than a capstone in Joyner’s life of work. Tough Love, Joyner’s 19th solo effort and his first since Coyote Butterfly…
“He has an energy to him like he’s floating,” Fratti said about Orcutt when she chucked his self-titled 2017 album, his first solo electric studio jaunt, on her Baker’s Dozen list for the Quietus. She’d stumbled over the record via a blog and immediately set about following the breadcrumb trail, picking through his blues deconstructions, free jazz side-quests and his early, formative work with Adris Hoyos as Harry Pussy, one of the USA’s greatest noise duos. What happened next isn’t completely clear, but Fratti and Orcutt began communicating and, at some point, Orcutt shuttled over a pack of improvised guitar solos that lit the touch paper for the next stage. At home in Mexico City, Fratti (alongside her partner and Titanic cohort I. La Católica) retreated…
Last year, Third Man Records released the reissue of Detroit’s unheralded songwriting genius, Ted Lucas’ 1975 cult classic self-titled album Ted Lucas (OM), as part of an ambitious archival campaign intent on spreading the open secret of Lucas’s genius and putting an end to his unfair anonymity.
Third Man Records released Images of Life, a career-spanning, 3xLP retrospective boxset illuminating the staggering breadth and depth of Lucas’ work, out May 22nd. Disc one, Strange Mysterious Sounds (1965-1970), highlights Lucas’ flirtation with psychedelic major label clout via his bands the Spike Drivers, the Misty Wizards and the Horny Toads. Disc two, Rainy Days (1970-1974) contains the solo acoustic warmth and charm most similar to the music found on his self-titled album.
After finding fame with the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, expatriate Englishman turned West Coast rock icon Graham Nash made an auspicious solo debut on this 1971 disc. It’s an exemplary singer-songwriter effort, striking a vital balance between graceful introspection and political fervor — and while it’s deeply personal, it still carries the harmonies, heart and politics that made CSN(Y) so essential.
With assistance from the likes of David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, and Dave Mason, highlights include the sensitive internal explorations “I Used to Be a King” and “Man in the Mirror” and the impassioned protest anthems “Chicago” and “Military Madness.” If Déjà Vu was a wild canyon party with four competing egos, Songs for Beginners…
…Lemoncello, returning with their second album, still carry the quiet confidence of a duo who have already carved out a distinctive place in contemporary Irish folk. Since their debut, Laura Quirke and Claire Kinsella have continued to refine the intimate, instinctive interplay that first brought them to our attention, the kind of vocal and instrumental chemistry that seems to snap into focus the moment they perform together. Their rise has been steady as they have deservedly earned wider audiences, while their songwriting resonates far beyond the grassroots circuit. That first record, also released on Claddagh, was captured directly to tape under the guidance of analogue devotee Julie McLarnon. It revealed a duo drawn to texture, tactility, and the human…
Paradise Metal is a sleight of hand. The music within has very little to do with metal in the conventional sense, and everything to do with the genre’s outer limits-the kind of undulating drone movements practiced by Earth and SUNN O))). The folks at Heat Crimes and their partner label Elhellel will have you know that this music is created by one Father Dionysios Tabakis, an Orthodox priest who serves at the Church of the Panagitsa in Nafplio, Greece. His instruments include the ney, oud, and lyra, among others. The idea is that Paradise Metal is a kind of ancient trance music that addresses age-old maladies: depression, alienation, and isolation.
Opener “Relaxation Music with Tanbur” recalls choice moments from…
Mountain of Youth – the moniker for Hunter Morris’ latest project – mines a slew of classic influences from ‘90s lo-fi rock to folk and Americana on his debut, making for a mix that manages to sound musically nostalgic but with enough of a contemporary feel that it’s not wasting time wallowing in the past.
That doesn’t necessarily pertain to the characters that populate Nowhere, NW, though. “Atomic Days” opens the album with whistling and a steady 4/4 drum beat, before Morris jumps in with lyrics about an aging couple cycling through thoughts of “what if” looking at where they are in life right now. And while the song could just as easily have been a ballad, Morris’ decision to opt for a mid-tempo rock vibe creates a far more…
Cowboy Junkies release Open to Beauty, a transparent yellow 3-LP and 2 CD collection of songs from their 21st century albums to date. This ‘Best Of’ set revisits selected tracks from albums Open, One Soul Now, Early 21st Century Blues, At The End of Paths Taken, Renmin Park, Demons, Sing In My Meadow, The Wilderness, All That Reckoning, Songs of the Recollection, and Such Ferocious Beauty.
Speaking about the new collection, Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins said: “We are now 25 years into this century, the beginning of which saw us leave the world of major labels and return to making music as an independent band. We figured this was as good a time as any to look back, reassess, and reflect on the music…
Taking the title to musical heart (the album cover pointedly having him sporting different looks), after two albums mining country, reunited with producer David Mansfield who contributes, among other things, guitars, pedal steel, lap steel, celesta and Ondes martenot, alongside drummer Charley Drayton, bassist Tony Scherr and keyboard player Andy Burton, Teddy Thompson’s latest album, Never Be the Same, digs back into rockier seams for his first album of original material since 2020 and, with influences ranging from Crowded House and The Beatles to his father Richard Thompson, songs exploring love, change and the passage of time.
With John Grant on synthesizers, there are, though, still country ballad traces to album opener ‘Come Back’ with its major chords and…
Fiddle player Rowan Piggott and banjoist Joe Danks first hit the scene as Old Spot in 2023, with their fifteen-track self-titled debut album. A duo of excellent musical ability and a love for American Old-time music, their sound combines strong traditional songs and tunes with a modern, spacious approach. Old Spot (II) continues exploring these traditions and fine-tunes; there is a discernible difference in the sound, with a suggestion of minimalism around some songs and a precise nature to the playing.
The former is evident on the traditional tune ‘Tom Dooley’, a beautifully played banjo piece with delicate swirls of five-string violin winding around the core melody and vocal. Joe’s clear singing is ideal for the song, with…
Following years of IVF and an on-stage miscarriage during a 2023 tour (she finished her set), Abigail Lapell was pregnant with her first child when she booked studio time to make her new album, Shadow Child. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the songs on Toronto singer-songwriter’s new album pivot around the theme of motherhood, with nine of the songs representing a month of gestation – her son was born in November 2024. The album features several special guests, embraces moments of joy and loss and addresses issues such as reproductive health.
Opening with a tolling bell and, inevitably featuring whistling, ‘Whistle Song (One in a Million)’ is a dreamily strummed bluesy musing on loss, mortality, resilience, hope and new…
Yorkshire-based folksinger/guitarist Chris Brain’s fourth coming album, Red Sun Rising, replaces the wide optimism of last year’s New Light with a sense of knowing, yet still manages to focus on the brightness of life and the idea of new beginnings and freshness with the rising of the sun.
As the record develops, the feeling of natural repetition through the guitar arrangements comes through, with additional instruments adding points of difference and flourishes of colour throughout. Take the lovely ‘Kinds of Kindness’: Chris is an accomplished fingerpicker with a solid technique reminiscent of stalwarts like Burt Jansch and Nick Drake, and here his piece is a tightly picked refrain that combines played notes with harmonics, giving the guitar sound a complex yet…
Back To The Garden (A Tribute To Joni Mitchell), the excellent free CD accompanying the June 2026 issue of MOJO Magazine, is less a conventional tribute album and more a lovingly curated journey through the many worlds of Joni Mitchell. Bringing together artists from folk, jazz, soul, indie rock and Americana, the collection celebrates not only Mitchell’s songwriting genius, but also the remarkable flexibility of her compositions.
What makes the compilation so engaging is its refusal to play safe. Rather than simply recreating familiar classics, the artists reinterpret them with personality and emotional depth. Roberta Flack brings warmth and elegance, while Fleet Foxes add a dreamy, atmospheric quality that perfectly suits Mitchell’s introspective writing.
…Born in Montana, Kiki Cavazos ran away at 16 to Alaska before heading south to Mexico. Yet this has nothing to do with how she sings of a fate wherein facts have no face and pathos is all there is.
We’re believing Cavazos’ role as a troubadour due to her performance — not her story. Granted, Cavazos has traveled the country like a Guthrie protégé and thus is “authentic”. Yet authenticity is not verisimilitude; this is to say Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, a middle-class New Yorker born to Lithuanian Jewish parents, who made you fall for his cowpoke drawl and accoutrements. Put differently, it is through Cavazos’ performances that her past is illuminated.
Therefore, the biography of the artist would fall apart without conviction—in fact, what…
Whitehorse have returned to their folk-rock roots on their latest full-length record, All I Want Is All of It. The Canadian husband-and-wife team of Luke Doucet and Melissa McClellan recorded the album in a 19th-century farmhouse to capture the mood of past spirits in the ancient place.
Of course, only a New World denizen would consider a place built 200 years ago old. Its semi-rural setting on the other side of the tracks offers a haunting aural landscape. The musicians said the location functioned as the creative inspiration behind the new disc.
Whitehorse‘s 11 songs are purposely experimental and vary in style and tone. They range from the primitive rawness of a demo (“Lighthouse”) recorded on McClellan’s iPhone…
1. Marisa Anderson – Rop Koh
2. Ed O’Brien – Blue Morpho
3. The Sleeves – Empty Thoughts
4. Tamikrest – Imanin
5. Thomas Dollbaum – Pulverize
6. Blood Sucking Maniacs – Family Tree/Heartbeat (Lucky Marlo Allen)
7. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – Like Swimwear (part two)
8. The Lemon Twigs – 2 Or 3
9. Kevin Morby – Badlands
10. Brown Spirits – Bakelite Dashboard
11. Aldous Harding – Venus in the Zinnia
12. Angélique Kidjo – Big Heart
13. Hiss Golden Messenger – I’m People
14. Suss – Sunset IV
15. Hurray for the Riff Raff – Pa’Lante (Live)
Of all the artists that emerged from the freak folk/New Weird America boom of the early noughties, Colorado-born Josephine Foster is one of the most enduring, and certainly one of the most interesting. Besides the obvious – her startling voice, opera trained but as wild as the hills – constant reinvention and inspired collaboration have been the hallmarks of her continued success.
She has tackled folk, country, desert psych, the poetry of Emily Dickinson and 19th-century German Lieder, and has teamed up with David Pajo and Andy Bar (as The Children’s Hour) and Jason Ajemian (as Born Heller). In recent years, her most fruitful collaboration has been with guitarist Victor Herrero, with whom she formed the band Mendrugo.