Amy Hollinrake has her feet planted in two worlds. She is an English feminist singer-songwriter combining folklore and mythology with contemporary sounds and instruments that are both contemporary and traditional. Creating a head spinning mix of yesterday and today, Sad…
How do you define who you are? To say Ebony Lamb is a recording artist simply doesn’t do her justice. She’s also a preeminent photographer, whose images of New Zealand’s literary figures and independent music scene gave her a certain…
A dreamer, a drug dealer, a lover, a man caught up in the hand life has dealt him, desperate to escape. Musicians are storytellers and on his new album, Dylan LeBlanc tells the tale of Coyote, a man drawn from…
I first stumbled upon Mali Velasquez by chance, taken in by her album art. It was a painting of three figures, two adults and a child between them, coloured in the yellows, pinks, and browns of an old family photograph.…
Recently struggling to sleep, I turned to Convocations – Sufjan Stevens’ 2021 49-track instrumental album, written in the wake of his father’s death. I was taken aback by this subtly inventive two-and-a-half hour, five-part song cycle. It came only one…
Fires crackling, a warm breeze tangling through your hair, lush green lands, open plains and rolling hills. Tales of love, death, and empowerment, entwined with morals, warnings, and memories. This is what folk music gifts to us and what listeners…
The music of Jack Cooper’s current band Modern Nature bears little resemblance to the music he made as half of Ultimate Painting. There really is no standard path that leads from there to No Fixed Point In Space. The shift…
Devendra Banhart is no stranger to anyone who reads these pages. Flying Wig sees the Houston-born musician and songwriter releasing his 11th album into the wild. He is 21 years deep into a recording career and shows no slowing down…
For fans of Margo Cilker’s splendid 2021 debut Pohoryville there’s good news. The follow-up to that album, Valley of Heart’s Delight, offers eleven more songs in the same rich musical vein. Acoustic guitar, bass and drums are joined most prominently,…
Having a sense of humour in the music business helps, and Kenny Bates, who trades as Quitter, definitely has one. Which is why his album Monument Road has been credited with being recorded in, “flats, homes, cupboards, bedrooms and burnt…