Just for a split second, I thought I had made a mistake and was listening to the wrong album. Surely the ugly squall of loud, distorted electric guitar which cascaded through my speakers had nothing to do with Jessica Lea…
Billie Marten is already fast becoming a bright, new presence in festivals and venues across the country – and she’s only 14 years old. Despite this, her songs contain a beauty and world weary maturity that has the ability to…
Three years ago, the Secret Sisters arrived with their thoroughly charming self-titled debut. Putting their blood harmonies to devastating effect, they whistled through an array of country standards while offering only two of their own compositions. The fact that one…
The term “break-up album” has been bandied around a lot recently. Coldplay’s Ghost Stories was teed up as the record to spill the beans on Chris Martin’s uncoupling, conscious or otherwise, from Gwyneth Paltrow, while Jack White and Dan Auerbach…
As their name might indicate, the Cadbury sisters promise a sweet intensity from their music, with its three part female harmonies and emphasis on plucked acoustic melodies. However, repeated listens to their new EP reveals a pleasingly dark bitterness, recorded…
Swopping his familiar position behind the mixing desk to the recording studio himself, Ethan Johns, with a production CV boasting the likes of Kings of Leon, Laura Marling and Ryan Adams to name just a few, has stepped to the…
This is a gem of a record. Pure, simple and undeniable. It took Scottish six-piece Broken Records three years to make their third album, and it sounds like every second of it was time well spent. As with their previous…
There was never any danger of the Moulettes turning out a dull album. Constellations is a punchy, bolshy creature, replete with a dense polyphony of sound and harmony. Building on the alt-folk experimentalism of 2012’s The Bear’s Revenge, this album…
Runaway’s Diary was inspired by the ramblings of Seasick Steve, and by Amy LaVere’s own brief stint as a teenage runaway. She inhabits a similar landscape to Lissie’s whole-hearted country rock, with hints of Tom Waits in his more romantic…
Sharon Van Etten has become one of the most splendid songwriters on earth. Not that she hasn’t had a somewhat torturous journey, but she is starting to really make her mark on popular music. Perhaps popular isn’t the right word.…