by Jonathan Frahm • • Comments Off on Video | Shawna Virago – High Road No. 6
Pioneering trans artist Shawna Virago is back again with more electrifying alt-country. In a press release, she states, “I’d been a little depressed from the non-stop level of hate aimed at trans people, and needed to write something that gave…
by Quentin Budworth • • Comments Off on Album | Margo Ross – Prairie Life
Sometimes you come across an artist that enchants and intrigues. Indie songwriter Margo Ross falls into this category. Her music has a crafted home-spun feel and intimacy. Like a hand-made clay pot with the thumb prints still visible, she has made a thing…
by Zuzanna Zareba • • Comments Off on Album | Gone Gone Beyond – 2030
Scientists and international organisations have been raising the alarm that humans have only nine years left to prevent the climate crisis. We need to hurry up because there is no planet B. This significant date, 2030, appears in the title…
by Bob Fish • • Comments Off on Album | The Mountain Goats – Dark in Here
The Mountain Goats are a little different than most bands, rather than taking on one project at a time they actually took on three. In between recording Songs for Pierre Chuvin and Getting Into Knives, they went into FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals…
by Quentin Budworth • • Comments Off on Album | Lady Nade – Willing
Let’s talk about Lady Nade, UK Americana Award nominee, showcased at the Folk Alliance International and the International Live Music Conference, performing at many online festivals in the UK and USA – including Thriving Roots and Folk on Foot. Recently…
by Quentin Budworth • • Comments Off on Album | Marry Waterson & Oliver Knight – The Days That Shaped Me (10th anniversary edition)
Dive in deep to the wonderful, traditional and ever surprising sound world of Marry Waterson and Oliver Knight’s The Days That Shaped Me and you won’t be disappointed. Here we have English folk-smithery and deep-rooted tradition at its idiosyncratic and…
by Quentin Budworth • • Comments Off on Album | Ringlefinch – Tall Tales
In Tall Tales, Ringlefinch have created a delightfully self-assured soundtrack for a world doing the hokey-cokey with the Covid 19 pandemic. Intelligent catchy song-writing, imagination, good humour, heart, hygge, and folk politics abound and flourish in this aural delight. I’m…
by Bob Fish • • Comments Off on Album | Chloe Foy – Where Shall We Begin
The voice is disorienting, pure as a bell, yet the subject matter of Where Shall We Begin by Chloe Foy is often decidedly downbeat. At first it seemed like a great lost Virginia Astley album. That lasted all of about…
by Bob Fish • • Comments Off on Album | David John Morris – Monastic Love Songs
David John Morris was asked to give up his guitar for nine months in order to enter Nova Scotia’s Gampo Abbey, which actually resulted in the creation of Monastic Love Songs. Along the way he had to work, study and meditate with the Buddhist…
by Ned Stranger • • Comments Off on Album | Iron & Wine – Archive Series No. 5 – Tallahassee Recordings
In the creative landscape there’s something quite unfashionable about looking back. Whether you’re an artist, a novelist or a songwriter, you’re constantly training yourself to think that the next thing you create – the next song, novel, painting – will…