The pitch for the music of The Far West, whose new album is their first since 2014, is “horribly painful songs that you can dance to”, according to bass player Robert Black.
There is less pain, however, than resignation and expectation, but the arrangements often mask this. There are more swayalongs than hootenannies here, but Black is right about danceability on the infectious ‘Meet Me Where We Parted Last’, which uses the horn section well, and the far too short ‘In Your Own Time’ (“things will come, just as surely as the rising sun”).
‘See for Yourself’ opens the album with the sort of music Bob Dylan was making for ‘Blonde On Blonde’; indeed, there’s a lyrical nod to the man on “this rolling stone is now covered in moss”.
Category: folk
1. Tobacco City – Buffalo
2. Florist – Have Heaven
3. Nico Georis – Geological Observations
4. Dean Wareham – Yesterday’s Hero
5. Eiko Ishibashi – October
6. Brown Horse – Dog Rose
7. Black Country, New Road – Besties
8. The Waterboys – Hopper’s On Top (Genius)
9. Songs Of Green Pheasant – Dark
10. Valerie June – Sweet Things Just for You
11. Index For Working Musik – Sister
12. Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow
13. Sam Akpro – Evenfall
14. Snapped Ankles – Pay the Rent
15. Butler, Blake & Grant – Bring an End
A seminal moment in modern acoustic guitar music is being revisited as Drag City released the 10th-anniversary reissue of Land of Plenty, the spellbinding 2015 debut from duo Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker.
To put things in perspective, 2015 was the same year Walker released his debut follow-up, Primrose Green. MacKay had yet to sign to Drag City (this would happen in 2017 with Esker), but released an album of John Hulburt tunes on Tompkins Square – Sunrise: Bill MacKay Plays the Songs of John Hulburt. Walker was also a Hulburt fan, having co-produced Hulburt’s 1972 private press LP, Opus III, the same year.
…The story of Land of Plenty is one of immediate artistic connection. After first…
Holly Carter may not be a name that readers are too familiar with, but it is very likely that she soon will be, for she is a prodigious talent. Her main claim to fame so far is that she was voted best instrumentalist in the Americana Music Association UK awards in 2023 and again in 2024. Her fingerpicking acoustic and electric guitar-playing style, together with being one of the few professional female steel guitar players in the UK, attest to her musical ability, and you can add to that a substantial songwriting skill. And now comes her first full-length album, Leave Your Mark.
Carter is based in Bristol, currently a hotbed of musical talent, and has made something of a name for herself with her gigs local to that area, as well as appearances at various music…
Gekidan Buraiha was a theater company, a part of the so-called Angura scene that included notable troupes such as Tenjō Sajiki, led by Shūji Terayama; Jōkyō Gekijo, led by Jūrō Kara, Black Tent Theater (originally known as Theater Center 68), led by Makoto Satō; and Waseda Little Theater, led by Tadashi Suzuki.
Gekidan Buraiha began through the efforts of its main actor Kanna Ten (Minoru Takahashi) and his friends, who were all members of the same theater workshop at Kokugakuin University. It was the early ’70s, and the crew would frequently drop in at the rehearsal space occupied by Jūrō Kara’s Jōkyō Gekidan, essentially becoming part of the group’s support crew, and appearing on occasion as extras in their performances.
MOJNA blends newly composed music with contrapuntal fragments and improvisation in their inventive take on Nordic folk music. Featuring fingerstyle guitar, Hardanger fiddle, and clarinet/bass clarinet, they create a distinctive sound that has become their signature.
There are bears and boats here, gusts of wind, a drooping cigarette, though you don’t really need to know the details: this is music so beautiful, so expressive, that you can just ride the waves with this outstanding Swedish/Norwegian trio. They have, quite rightly, been showered with awards for their unique sound, sumptuous and spacious, sometimes playful, sometimes gentle and reflective, with a rich bass clarinet, tiny bird-like fiddle notes and a guitar that ranges from…
Home is the charming result of a collaboration between Xan Tyler from Glasgow and Amsterdam-based Jonathan Brown, aka Dusty Stray. Both are highly accomplished solo performers who have made several individual albums.
They met through mutual admiration for each other’s work, and their musical partnership has evolved with this project. The album was recorded remotely during COVID, with tracks being sent back and forth and fashioned between their two studios. The fact that they were not together when they recorded Home makes its warmth and intimacy all the more remarkable.
The quality of the mix is delightful, and as a duet, their voices match each other’s perfectly. Both are extremely generous with the space…
Norway has a thriving and intriguing experimental folk scene, and multi-instrumentalist Kenneth Lien is one of its key exponents.
…For his latest offering, Norwegian Electronic Folk Music, he has teamed up yet again with DJ and electronic music producer Jørgen Sissyfus, otherwise known as Center of the Universe, for an album that does exactly what it says in the title. Lien plays Hardanger fiddle, jaw harp and willow flute, while Jørgen adds propulsive beats and effects for a high-energy set that promises to have people in Scandinavian clubs dancing to folk music in no time.
It starts with ‘Fanitullen’, a well-known Norwegian tune that in this iteration begins with a stomping electronic beat before the rousing…
There’s a difference between merely recording songs and making an album. By the time The Mammals realized they were doing the latter, they had nearly enough music for two LPs. So, the indie-roots band arranged the tracks into the double album Touch Grass. The first volume leans toward socially conscious tracks, while Vol. 2 has a more personal, introspective feel.
…It was sometime in late 2021 or early ’22 when Merenda and Ungar began doing weekly recording sessions at their Humble Abode Music studio with bassist/engineer Brandon Morrison.
The plan when they started was to make demos of the songs that Merenda and Ungar had been writing following the release of the Mammals’ 2020 album Nonet.
East Side Confessions is KB Bayley’s third album, and it has a delightful melancholy feel to it. It feels sparse yet layered, mostly thanks to his excellent lap steel guitar playing, which is quite stunning and is accompanied delightfully by several guests who lift his playing even further. It mixes six original songs with four interpretations, the most unusual one of which is his version of the Korgis hit ‘Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime’. He has completely changed the feeling of what was a pretty ordinary ’70s song into something quite enigmatic and far more appealing.
‘Don’t Let the Rain Fall on My Face’ has an intense Southern swamp feel to it. It relates to the last words and reflections of a dying man, someone being hanged, “They are putting up…
Described as the “original unedited version” of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, this RSD exclusive release contains 13 tracks, including four that were removed prior to its original release: “Rocks and Gravel,” “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” “Rambling, Gambling Willie” and “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” Yes, those four tracks eventually found their way out to the public, but it’s still fun to hold a somewhat different version of one of his signature albums that almost snuck out into the multiverse. A few copies of this particular “canceled” edition from the early ’60s have been among the most valuable Dylan collectibles there are.
The release this is most comparable to is an RSD version of “Blood on the Tracks (Test Pressing)” that came out in 2019…
Some Other Stories is the second album from South London duo Melanie Crew and Ross Palmer, who are life partners as well as musical ones, and they each supply songs written individually to this 12-song project.
Six songs are credited to Palmer and five to Crew. Palmer’s composition ‘Winning Ticket’ opens the album, setting the mood of quiescence and calm, with lyrics full of resignation: “those who are desperate to win are destined to lose”. He also penned ‘Close the Book’ (“a guilty man who takes the stand to make his last request”), which benefits from contributions on cello by Ben Handysides, and the philosophical ‘Blindly Through the World’. On that song, which is set in a minor key, Palmer ponders “bitter harvests and…
While Jackson Scribner’s sophomore release likely won’t elicit cries of “Judas” directed at him, his move to a fuller, more electric sound warrants attention, just not the kind that involves booing.
Arriving four years after his eponymous debut, Depression Kids, expands the mostly acoustic sound of that album without detracting from his earnest vocals and insightful lyrics. While his songwriting remains honest and authentic, the added instrumentation and arrangements succeed in fleshing out the songs and adding interesting textures to the overall sound. The result is a warm-sounding album featuring an accomplished core of musicians whose symbiotic playing throughout helps fill in the spaces between Scribner’s words and makes for some perfect…
It’s fair to say the past decade has brought some challenges for Swedish singer-songwriter Marlene Oak. Ten years ago, she got the difficult diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Type 2, then just a few years ago she experienced an episode of severe psychosis, something she described as “terrifying”, leading her to question her own reality and even fearing there was a demon inside her.
Understandably, it took her some time to recover, but even whilst still feeling fragile, she felt compelled to turn her trauma into art, and with Peter Morén, she co-wrote and produced what would be Welcome to Oak Land.
“I thought I always knew / What I wanted to do / Now I’m split up in two,” Oak sings on the album opener ‘Threading a Fine Line’, no doubt…
Recorded live in Spain during Loreena McKennitt’s summer 2024 tour of Europe, Live in Madrid is an audio vérité soundboard recording of a complete 20-song show from that tour, captured in stereo directly from the mixing desk located in the venue front-of-house. Other than the mastering and editing work needed in order for us to offer the listeners an optimum listening experience, this album comes as close as you can get to the live performance as it sounded at the “Noches del Botánico” festival on that balmy Mediterranean night.
Live In Madrid contains the entirety of 1994’s The Mask and Mirror performed in sequence, plus over an hour of fan favourites drawn from across the range of Loreena’s catalogue of studio recordings.
The new Jason Isbell album, Foxes in the Snow, offers an opportunity to appreciate his considerable gifts as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist in a fresh way. It’s his first solo acoustic album and his first that he recorded in New York — in just five days no less at Electric Lady Studios in the West Village.
In February, Isbell played two sold-out shows at the Beacon Theatre, blending the new material with fan favorites from his years with The 400 Unit and the Drive-By Truckers. Each night ended with a carefully chosen cover: a haunting rendition of Bon Iver’s “Best/Rest” on Friday and a tender take on John Prine’s “Storm Windows” on Saturday.
A few days later, during a conversation with WFUV radio, Isbell opened up about the making of the album and the beautiful old guitar that…
…includes two new, never released songs.
Okkervil River write dreamy songs with slumber-blurred stories and play them with a drifting, somnambulant gait. The band — named for a river outside St. Petersburg, Russia — filled last year’s eye-opening Down the River of Golden Dreams with gentle ballads about beds and war criminals and forgiveness, but the songs on their follow-up EP, Sleep and Wake Up Songs, are more brittle and fragile, like a light sleeper’s snooze. The EP condenses the album’s best qualities and discards most of its weaknesses, and its brevity makes it all the more emotionally forceful.
“Rapt, in Star Wars sheets/ With my hand across your belly/ We waded through the watercolor,” Will Sheff sings on opener “A Favor”. The song…
This Christmas, the First Lady of Folk Kate Rusby gifts her fans something truly special – an exclusive and limited run Double-CD titled 20 Christmas Is Merry, a celebration of two decades of magical festive music.
20 Christmas Is Merry features 17 stunning live tracks recorded at several venues over the last five years. The live recordings range from the anthemic soundscape of ‘Glorious’ to the gentle, exquisite beauty of ‘The Frost Is All Over.’ Every performance glows with the spirit of a Kate Rusby Christmas. The recordings capture that unique magic – the feeling of being at home with friends around the fire, a glass of mulled wine in hand, basking in the glow of music that feels both comforting and transcendent.
Alongside the live tracks, there are five…
From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock is a collection of demos and outtakes that Bill made while beginning to navigate the music business, writing and demoing endlessly to find what worked for him, and for Decca (where he’d signed to their Deram imprint), ahead of the release of his self-titled debut LP at the beginning of 1970.
Songs such as ‘Maudy La Lune’ were never released in any official capacity – Bill was confusingly embarrassed by the lyrics, they weren’t “meaningful” enough – yet it’s exactly the kind of song that stops anyone in their tracks, sounding as though it might be a long lost McCartney number. Across the 25 tracks is a snapshot of Bill as the promising songwriter, raw and explorative, bursting with the promise of something special.
British singer-songwriter Lucy Kitt unveils her highly anticipated second album, Telling Me, a deeply personal collection that shifts focus from introspection to storytelling, capturing the lives and struggles of those closest to her.
…She mixes Laurel Canyon with ’90s acoustic indie, a voice not a million miles away from The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler, and chiming guitars borrowed from Robin Guthrie, she builds as personal as her often introspective lyrics. Opening song ‘Blink’ veers towards the indie, while the more strident ‘Waiting Game’ adds a country tinge to a song Stevie Nicks would have been more than happy with. That song also points the way to the direction her lyrics have taken, being penned during lockdown for friends struggling…