by Ian Parker • • Comments Off on Album | The Civil Wars – The Civil Wars
Break-ups are hard. Emotions are raw. Sometimes it takes a little while for the smoke to clear enough to see what, if anything, is still left standing. And The Civil Wars, in case you didn’t already know, is very much…
by For Folk's Sake • • Comments Off on Album | Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker – Fire & Fortune
What does it take to redirect the trends of culture? Is it money, or is it love? Was mankind tuned into disco, to apocalyptic movies? Or were they tuned into us? These are big questions. These are big, pretentious questions…
by For Folk's Sake • • Comments Off on EP | Daniel Pattison – The Southern Cross
As soon as the first line has been sung on Daniel Pattison’s debut EP The Southern Cross you’ll be aware that Pattison’s is one of the most noteworthy male voices of the last twenty years. It’s a gorgeous voice –…
by For Folk's Sake • • Comments Off on Album | Landshapes – Rambutan
Landshapes (formerly Lulu and the Lampshades) are a foursome most well-known for playing on cups in their kitchen. They are raucously fun to see live, playing a dizzying array of instruments (especially percussive ones), and Rambutan is rhythmically and musically…
by For Folk's Sake • • Comments Off on Album | Darren Hayman – Bugbears
Whilst writing The Violence, last year’s dazzling musical chronicle of the Essex witch-hunts, Darren Hayman researched and adapted a repertoire of folk songs from the civil war period. On Bugbears he has kitted them out and sent them to march,…
by For Folk's Sake • • Comments Off on Album | Caroline Rose – America Religious
With this album created from stories and poems penned during a grand road trip across the United States, Caroline Rose has not held back in terms of her views on contemporary America she gathered along the way. The songs of…
by For Folk's Sake • • Comments Off on Album | Goldheart Assembly – Long Distance Song Effects
Okay, let’s get this out of the way straight off the bat: this is not a folk album, and I’m not quite sure why it’s been sent our way. I’m delighted it has, though, as it is a worthy follow-up…
by For Folk's Sake • • Comments Off on Album | Tom Russell (with the Norwegian Wind Ensemble) – Aztec Jazz
Ever the eccentric, it almost seems on this occasion as though Russell has set out to collate the least appealing set of words ever to appear on an album cover. Long-term devotees will not be put off, though, and nor…
by Helen • • Comments Off on News | Mumford & Sons beat Bublé to Number 1
We remember when these four were barely out of short trousers, playing teensy tiny gigs in the backrooms of West London pubs and getting confused about shorthand. Now look at them, kicking Michael Bublé off the number one spot in…
by For Folk's Sake • • Comments Off on Album | Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo – Dear River
Dear River, the fourth album by Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo (EB&TRCH) and their first for Linn Records, is that rarest of records: an instant classic. With not a gram of filler, it’s the kind of album that…