Category: Reviews

Live | Bushstock 2014

Another year, another sold-out Bushstock. Curated by clubnight-turned-label Communion, Bushstock is always a chance to catch some of the best emerging talent. The festival has featured artists like Ben Howard, Daughter and Mumford & Sons so you might come away feeling pretty smug, knowing that…

Album | First Aid Kit – Stay Gold

First Aid Kit have been charming us with their perfect harmonies and earnest folk songs for years now, but something about Stay Gold feels different. Confident. Mature. The duo that brought us ‘Emmylou’ and ‘I Met Up With the King’…

Album | Jessica Lea Mayfield – Make My Head Sing

Just for a split second, I thought I had made a mistake and was listening to the wrong album. Surely the ugly squall of loud, distorted electric guitar which cascaded through my speakers had nothing to do with Jessica Lea…

EP | Billie Marten – Ribbons

Billie Marten is already fast becoming a bright, new presence in festivals and venues across the country – and she’s only 14 years old. Despite this, her songs contain a beauty and world weary maturity that has the ability to…

Album | The Secret Sisters – Put Your Needle Down

Three years ago, the Secret Sisters arrived with their thoroughly charming self-titled debut. Putting their blood harmonies to devastating effect, they whistled through an array of country standards while offering only two of their own compositions. The fact that one…

Album | Mary Gauthier – Trouble and Love

The term “break-up album” has been bandied around a lot recently. Coldplay’s Ghost Stories was teed up as the record to spill the beans on Chris Martin’s uncoupling, conscious or otherwise, from Gwyneth Paltrow, while Jack White and Dan Auerbach…

EP | The Cadbury Sisters – Close

As their name might indicate, the Cadbury sisters promise a sweet intensity from their music, with its three part female harmonies and emphasis on plucked acoustic melodies. However, repeated listens to their new EP reveals a pleasingly dark bitterness, recorded…

Album | Ethan Johns – The Reckoning

Swopping his familiar position behind the mixing desk to the recording studio himself, Ethan Johns, with a production CV boasting the likes of Kings of Leon, Laura Marling and Ryan Adams to name just a few, has stepped to the…

Album | Broken Records – Weights and Pulleys

This is a gem of a record. Pure, simple and undeniable. It took Scottish six-piece Broken Records three years to make their third album, and it sounds like every second of it was time well spent. As with their previous…

Album | Moulettes – Constellations

There was never any danger of the Moulettes turning out a dull album. Constellations is a punchy, bolshy creature, replete with a dense polyphony of sound and harmony. Building on the alt-folk experimentalism of 2012’s The Bear’s Revenge, this album…