Category: Reviews

Album | Anna Calvi – One Breath

There may only be two of them to date, but it is already clear that when you drop the needle on an Anna Calvi record, you enter a world quite unlike any other. Her world is one of cinematic flair,…

Album | Israel Nash Gripka – Israel Nash’s Rain Plains

I might be the wrong guy to review this record. If you were figuring out the target audience for Israel Nash Gripka’s third record, you’d probably find me sitting on the bullseye, waiting to be picked off with ludicrous ease.…

Album | Okkervil River | The Silver Gymnasium

The Silver Gymnasium is a misty look back in time to singer Will Sheff’s childhood growing up in the small New Hampshire town of Meriden, circa 1986. The album cover is rather wonderful in its own right, coming complete with…

Album | Lanterns on the Lake – Until The Colours Run

Having never seen Lanterns on the Lake perform live, I’ve always found them quietly mysterious. Until the Colours Run, the follow up to the well-received Gracious Tide, Take Me Home only adds to this image. There’s still oodles of reverb…

Album | This Frontier Needs Heroes – Hooky

If it ain’t broke…This Frontier Needs Heroes are back with a familiar formula: a fan-funded third album continues their run of charming cosmic-folk and catchy tunes. Hooky follows on where The Future left off, a fine collection of psychedelic-infused Americana.…

Album | Robinson – Willamina Machine

Anybody at any one of the many folk music festivals this summer can’t have failed to notice the numbers of youngsters swanning about almost non-ironically in 1950s garb. The beatnik look is back, but the sounds, by and large, remain…

Album | The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love you – Neko Case

‘Where Did I Leave That Fire?’ asks Neko Case on the penultimate song on her sixth solo studio album, the long-awaited follow-up to 2009’s double Grammy-winning ‘Middle Cyclone’. The good news is that it burns as fiercely as ever on…

Live | Bryan Ferry @ Proms in the Park, Hyde Park

Bryan Ferry, proms in the Park, Hyde Park

Probably Bryan Ferry wishes he was a bit cooler than headlining Proms in the Park. He almost definitely wouldn’t have done it in his Roxy Music days, but maybe he’ll take the screaming fans wherever he can get them now…

Session | VIDEO: Introducing… The Staycations

Along our travels at The Cambridge Folk Festival, team FFS came across a young but considerably talented band. Having asked them to move several times in order to shoot the various artists we’d already booked, we felt it only right…

Album | Volcano Choir – Repave

Volcano Choir’s Repave is a beautiful album, not to be taken as a collection of songs, rather to be enjoyed as one piece of music in its entirety. That said, I felt like I only understood the power in the…