Porchlight is Paige Anderson’s first release since becoming the sole frontperson of Two Runner, a folk duo which began life in 2020 when she met her former bandmate Emilie Rose. The duo toured extensively, both nationally and internationally, releasing their debut album, Modern Cowboy, in 2023. While Emilie stepped away from life on the road in 2025, she makes an appearance on Porchlight. The release also follows the end of a long-term romantic relationship and, so perhaps not surprisingly, the song themes encompass transition, loss, and journeys – both literal and personal – while also embracing the potential of a future as yet unknown. Despite dealing with the ambiguity of a new start, this is a fully assured sophomore release, built on songs…
Category: folk
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…
The Mystery is an album by Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel that was released in 2006. The album includes the track Gameshow Rag/Cannonball Rag which was nominated for Best Country Instrumental Performance at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards. The song won Instrumental of the Year at the 2007 Country Music Awards of Australia. This album has a peace and a gentleness that emanates throughout the compositions. The song titles offer some insight: Cowboy’s Dream, The Mystery, That’s the Spirit, Footprints, Keep it Simple. The record also features one of Emmanuel’s most popular original songs Lewis & Clark, and a very beautiful instrumental arrangement of the Billy Joel classic And So It Goes. In honor of the 20th Anniversary…
Sometimes a project has so much potential, so much more to give beyond its original iteration, that it seems to take on a life of its own. This is certainly the case with Spell Songs, which can trace its roots back to 2015, when the nature writer Robert Macfarlane published Landmarks, a study (or rather a celebration) of language and landscape. It was in Landmarks that Macfarlane first posited the idea of a word-horde, a lexicon of landscape-words at risk of being forgotten – and worryingly culled from children’s dictionaries – as people become increasingly estranged from nature. In 2017, Macfarlane collaborated with the illustrator Jackie Morris to create The Lost Words: A Spell Book, a stunningly produced selection of some of our most wonderful and endangered…
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’…
Chris Murphy was born into an Irish-Italian family in New York, growing up surrounded by a wide range of traditional music such as Italian, Irish and Latin rhythms. Later, at college, Murphy explored Turkish and Indian music, so with this spread of influences it’s perhaps unsurprising that his work encompasses a variety of styles and genres, including jazz, blues, Celtic, folk, ambient and country rock.
Now based in Los Angeles, Murphy is principally known for his performances as a violinist, but he is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, having a canon of more than 500 compositions. Murphy has also collaborated extensively throughout his career, and his latest album, Songs from the Trees, sees him working…
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…
Before her first release as a solo artist, songwriter and producer, Sera Cahoone had plenty of experience playing with other musicians. Starting at an early age, she first learned how to play the drums, a skill she soon put into practice playing at sessions at local dive bars.
Years later, she moved to Seattle, where she became the drummer for the slowcore outfit Carissa’s Wierd, and later, Band of Horses. 2006 marked the year of her solo debut, which would be followed by a string of records leading up to her latest release, I’ve Missed You All These Years, an album that was eight years in the making.
For I’ve Missed You All These Years, Cahoone returns to Sub Pop Records, the label that first signed her at the start of her solo career,…
Kindhearted singer-songwriter Chris Pierce has one of those indelible, soulful voices that seeps right into your head and won’t let go. You may be hooked from his opening notes and be easily compelled to listen to his meaningful, healing songs. He is a voice for the voiceless and the underserved, intent on spreading hope. Songs for the Heavy Hearted is his eighth solo album. In short, he is a freedom fighter who continues to live to fight the good fight. He says, “…Whatever happens, we have to find a way to count our blessings and seek liberty for ourselves and fight for the liberty of others.”
Pierce grew up in an interracial household and has endured violence against his family from his early childhood years. He has conquered…
Sounds Like Art is an exciting new concert initiative that invites musicians to perform amongst works of art in a European museum of their choice. World-renowned artist Sting performs in the beautiful surroundings of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum amongst paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Judith Leyster, and reflects on the works of the old masters.
The 17-time Grammy Award winning artist performs a unique concert amongst masterpieces in the Gallery of Honour. Playing a rare 17th century guitar, Sting, managed by Martin Kierszenbaum/Cherrytree Music Company, reveals his love for the Old Masters and revels in the power of books and reading, while performing in the museum’s spectacular library.
From the beginning of her recording career, English singer/songwriter Elanor Moss has demonstrated a faculty for intimate, perceptive lyrics and wistful melodies, even on the partly electric, Brooklyn-recorded Cosmic EP. She takes her investigations of behaviors, outlooks, and emotions to the next level, though, on The Knife, The Needle, her poetic full-length debut. Recorded in a cabin in the Scottish Highlands with producer Peter Miles (Torres, Dodie), who also mixed the album, it sees her strip things down to bare acoustics, with Moss’ guitar subtly fleshed out by instruments like violin, flügelhorn, and double bass in arrangements by jazz and folk musician Matthew Herd. As for the vocals, Moss’ performances here are relentlessly tender, even…
Elaine Palmer grew up in an old watermill within an isolated village in rural North Yorkshire, spending much of her life travelling back and forth to family in Phoenix, Arizona. From an early age she immersed herself in music and started writing songs influenced by her surroundings both in the UK and USA, developing a repertoire which blended alt-country, Americana, folk and country rock. Elaine’s distinctive rich and expressive vocal style is characterised by her slightly husky tones, bluesy edge and the strong emotional depth which she carries through in every song she writes and performs. All of these qualities were on full display in Elaine’s most recent album Half Moon Rising which was recorded in San Diego in 2024.
Now Elaine Palmer releases her new album,…
Alex Dupree’s Talking to the Dog arrives with the unassuming confidence of a record that trusts language, melody, and lived-in performance to carry equal philosophical weight. The album’s guiding phrase, drawn from Hank Williams’ quip that writing a song is “just talking to the dog,” becomes less a playful anecdote and more a working theory of communication itself. In Dupree’s hands, that idea stretches beyond its homespun origins into something expansive: songwriting as a form of address that may or may not be understood but insists on being spoken anyway.
“New Meaning” opens and sets the tone with understated assurance. Dupree’s voice moves through a warm arrangement shaped by Aaron Stern on bass and Stephen Patterson on…
Lance Cowan hails from West Kentucky. Songwriting and singing mark the third phase of his working life. Originally employed as a journalist for a weekly newspaper, then a publicist, it was only a short jump to honing his craft as a songwriter. His excellent first album, So Far, So Good, released in 2024, was followed a year later with the critically acclaimed Against the Grain.
Continuing to write, Cowan’s third release in three years once again hits the mark and is a strong set of eleven cuts.
What stands out in the songs is Cowan’s ability to weave a story and keep your attention. The music is no-frills americana, occasionally bordering on country and with one track dipping more than a toe in the easy-listening pool.
Clayton Denwood hails from Toronto, Canada, and now resides in Bristol, South West England, via Woodstock, New York. Early influences, while he was formulating his musical style, were Bob Dylan (he was even touted at times as the new Dylan), Van Morrison, The Band and Grateful Dead and his appreciation of roots music appears to have emanated from these early days. Living in Woodstock for some years reinforced this, especially as he worked with Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko from The Band. He spent years honing his craft in live performances across New York City, Montreal, Toronto and London before settling in the UK several years ago. He now plies his trade across the land with appearances, with his red-hot band, at south of…
Paul McClure, on his fourth album, decided to go to pastures new and left the rural north and travelled south to East Sussex and the fine Bex-Pop Studios in Bexhill-on-Sea. For this album, Trevor Moss took over the production duties and provided bass, mandolin, banjo, and harmonica, as well as fellow musicians Thure Johansen on electric guitar and resonator guitar, violinist Henry Bristow, and Moss’s wife, Hannah-Lou, on vocals. McClure himself says, “we wanted to capture a moment, prioritising feel over perfection, and the record came together pretty quickly over a few sessions”.
We open with a really strong song, ‘I’m Not Lost’, a banjo-focused song looking at how we try and pick up the pieces again after problems and trying to stay positive with some lovely…