Below is our attempt at a comprehensive directory of folk artists currently on Twitter – of course, we aren’t Twitter deities and as such will almost certainly have missed out on certain artists. Let us know if you can think…
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Local Natives recommend…
Local Natives have got a great community of artists around them in LA. So when we interviewed them, we asked them to suggest bands we should check out. So, we present to you Voxhaul Broadcast, Rumspringa, Fool’s Gold, Foreign Born, Pepper Rabbit, The Growlers and The Union Line.
Album recommendation: Kristin Hersh – Hips and Makers
Here’s the thing about Kristin Hersh: she’s a fucking goddess. A goddess, I might add, to whom far too little attention is paid. She’s also lead singer and guitarist for Throwing Muses, but that’s another story. I first happened upon…
Album recommendation: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Boatman’s Call
For me, albums I truly admire can be divided into two piles: those I wish I’d written and those I wish someone had written about me. The Boatman’s Call is very much the latter. When an album opens with a…
Live: Devendra Banhart @ Shepherds Bush Empire 15/12/09
Bounding on stage at Shepherds Bush Empire, girl-hipped and beard-faced, Devendra Banhart assessed a crowd made up of copy-cat males (long hair and moustaches gleaming), flower-adorned teenage girls, and a rather large chunk of what I can only describe as…
Album: Dan Mangan, Nice, Nice, Very Nice
Dan Mangan is a folk-rock musician with a soft touch and vocals less strained and ragged than Mark Lanegan’s. His latest album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice, is, indeed, a pleasant ode to songwriting and traditional craftsmanship. Piano, horns, claps, female…
EP: Johnny Flynn – Sweet William
Singer, musician, actor, poet and annoyingly handsome fellow Johnny Flynn follows up the success of his 2008 debut long player A Larum with this delightful little package, a taster of what to expect from his second album due out early…
Album: Paper Aeroplanes – The Day We Ran Into The Sea
Born from the ashes of acoustic pop outfit Halflight, Paper Aeroplanes are the combined musical talents of vocalist Sarah Howells and guitar-man Richard Llewellyn – and it doesn’t take Poirot-esque detective skills to work out that the debut from welsh group Paper Aeroplanes is an indie-pop record – from the sweetly fairytale-ish album name to the cover art depicting vocalist Sarah Howells running through a field strewn with feathers – everything about Paper Aeroplanes screams of the kind of doe-eyed, twinkly twee currently being peddled by the likes of Noah and The Whale and Theoretical Girl. So how does the music itself measure up?
EP: She Keeps Bees – Revival
She Keeps Bees are a little 2-piece from Brooklyn consisting of Jessica Larrabee and Andy Laplant, but don’t be fooled by their size, the band should really be set for big things. With this EP, Revival, we hear exactly what these guys are about- simple stripped down bluesy genius. And stripped down/ simple bluesy genius just so happens to be my favourite kind of genius. There’s just something about a band that have the power to blow away an audience with a single vocal, a guitar and some drums that gets to me.
Album: The Tailors – Come Dig Me Up
Wannabe paleontologists The Tailors’ second album, Come Dig Me Up, is brilliantly varied, blending folk and country sounds seamlessly and addressing themes that range from extinction to teenage angst.