Lawrence Arabia, the moniker chosen by Kiwi James Milne, returns with a fantastic new album entitled The Sparrow. Previous album Look Like A Fool hinted at a Beck esque approach in his low-fi production effects but underlying this was a…
Author: For Folk's Sake
Album | Firefly Burning – Lightships
Firefly Burning remind me of Dirty Projectors in their musicianship and clear intention to do genre-bending things; sparks of piano, strings, metallic gamelan percussion and choral voices make this album implacably weird. Their experiments don’t always come off; songs self-sabotage…
Album | Annie Dressner – Strangers Who Knew Each Other’s Names
Annie Dressner’s debut album begins with ‘Fly‘, the premise of which is familiar enough – young adulthood as a kind of flight – but it feels fresh. Her sound has the atmosphere of a teenage film, veering from poppy to…
Album | Angus Stone – Broken Brights
Angus Stone, the brother contingent of brother and sister duo Angus and Julia Stone, makes his return to solo-dom this summer, and a rather lovely return it is. Both of the Stone siblings started out as solo acts, using each…
Album | Family of the Year – Loma Vista
I’m not a great believer in music being seasonal: after all, a good tune is still a good tune all year round. But there’s no denying that Loma Vista is a summer record. And when the sun’s shining, this is…
Album | Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan
Swing Lo Magellan, the sixth studio album by Brooklyn-based Dirty Projectors, provides the latest look into the weird and wonderful musical mind of band leader Dave Longstreth, continuing his exploration for more obscure and eccentric sounds, counterbalanced with a sense…
Festival | No Direction Home 2012
For anyone who like End of the Road, the prospect was tantalising. A festival that had toilets, bands and comedy like End of the Road but also was smaller, by a lake, up North and in June. And we were…
Live | Tallest Man on Earth @ Hackney Empire, 3rd July 2012
To (mis)quote Blur ‘I think he’d like to have been Jimmy Page but then nature didn’t make him that way’. That’s the impression The Tallest Man on Earth (aka Kristian Matsson) gave as he stalked, strutted and swaggered his way…
Album | Jesca Hoop – The House That Jack Built
Championed by Tom Waits and Guy Garvey, California-born, Manchester-based singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop is back with a sumptuous third album. Infused with dark grief and surreal lyrics, the collection is beautifully balanced by full-blown quirky pop and imaginative dream-folk (not to…
Album | Giant Giant Sand – Tucson
Tucson, the latest release from Howard Gelb-organized music collective Giant Sand (a group expanded here to become ‘Giant’ Giant Sand), is balanced, coherent, and aesthetically consistent. The aforementioned adjectives may not sound like a glowing review, but, in fact, those…