If it ain’t broke…This Frontier Needs Heroes are back with a familiar formula: a fan-funded third album continues their run of charming cosmic-folk and catchy tunes. Hooky follows on where The Future left off, a fine collection of psychedelic-infused Americana.…
Anybody at any one of the many folk music festivals this summer can’t have failed to notice the numbers of youngsters swanning about almost non-ironically in 1950s garb. The beatnik look is back, but the sounds, by and large, remain…
‘Where Did I Leave That Fire?’ asks Neko Case on the penultimate song on her sixth solo studio album, the long-awaited follow-up to 2009’s double Grammy-winning ‘Middle Cyclone’. The good news is that it burns as fiercely as ever on…
Volcano Choir’s Repave is a beautiful album, not to be taken as a collection of songs, rather to be enjoyed as one piece of music in its entirety. That said, I felt like I only understood the power in the…
Upon hearing Pain is Beauty for the first time, even before reading in Chelsea Wolfe’s website bio that her third studio album is ‘a self-described love letter to nature’, it was clear that the essence resonating most strongly throughout is…
From the first drum beat Single Flame creates an intense ambience reminiscent of an emerging Florence + the Machine, using her voice as the primary instrument Lucy Ward entrances the listener with epic and satirical lyrics. The power behind ‘I…
The Dodos have always been a band of the brain more than the heart, easier to admire than to love. They produce songs that are meticulously crafted with not a beat or a thought out of place. But there’s a…
The ninth studio album by the Oregon veteran marks a return to more conventional material after 2011’s Tumble Bee: Laura Veirs Sings Folk Songs for Children. If that project seemed a surprising departure for “Two Beers Veirs”, this rock-tinged set…
Icecapades, the debut album from The Lunchtime Sardine Club, pseudonym of Brighton musician Oliver Newton, comprises an intriguing array of songs and moods. The album was home-recorded over a year and a half, and right from the first, Newton reveals…
After debut album Magpie Tess Jones returns with a new band of musicians, The Circle, in tow. Together they create a bigger, heavier rock sound that still has one eye on folk music. From the opening seconds of first track…