In 2008, Adelir Antonio de Carli, a Brazilian priest, launched himself off a cliff with 1,000 helium balloons and was never seen again. His story led Hollie Fullbrook to write the song ‘Priest With Balloons’, a lyric from which gives…
Category: Records
Album | My Sad Captains – Fight Less Win More
Stolen Recordings One suspects that Ed Wallis could feel lonely in a crowded room. While some musicians decamp, Bon Iver-style, to isolated woodland cabins to key into the creativity that isolation brings, Wallis decided to hole up in a borrowed…
EP | The Staves – Mexico
There’s something very woolly jumper about the Staves, as might be expected from graduates of the Liverpool School of Performing Arts. Your enjoyment of the sweet-toothed folk tunes that make up the Mexico EP will depend entirely on your tolerance for…
EP | Stealing Sheep – Noah And The Paper Moon
With their long drapes of hair and songs dotted with twangling loopy bits and swooping girl-trio harmonies, Stealing Sheep are a bit of a throwback to hippydom, but they have more than retro appeal going for them. Noah and the…
Album | Cass McCombs – Humor Risk
Humor Risk, the second Cass McCombs album to be released this year, juxtaposes itself against April’s Wit’s End; where the first was harrowing and gloomy, this is, at times, surprisingly buoyant and hopeful. And as the album’s title suggests, Cass…
Album | Dan Michaelson – Sudden Fiction
Lord knows where the Coastguards disappeared to. He had them earlier this year, tumbling out low musical rumblings in the tunnels beneath Charing Cross station. He kept them by his side for the first two albums, the devastatingly sad Saltwater…
Album | Laura Veirs – Tumble Bee
Laura Veirs’ eighth studio album, Tumble Bee, carries the subtitle ‘Sings Folk Songs For Children’. So we at For Folk’s Sake could think of no better idea than asking some kids to review it. We turned to twins William and…
Album | She & Him – A Very She & Him Christmas
A Very She & Him Christmas was one of those projects that, the moment you heard of its existence, was right. A band who trade in understated beauty and unironic nostalgia seem perfect to cut through the histrionics, clichés and…
Album | Eleanor Friedberger – Last Summer
The clocks have changed, the frost has arrived, and we’re gearing up for a bumper crop of Christmas albums. Not the most predictable time of year for the UK release of Eleanor Friedberger’s debut album Last Summer, but it’s a…
Album | The Whiskey Priest – Lost Wages
The Whiskey Priest is the solo project of the Sad Accordions’ Seth Woods, who uses the alternative moniker as an outlet to showcase disused songs, enjoying a degree of success already with Wave and Cloud in 2010. Now he’s back…