“I think we must be the most English band of all time,” says the Leisure Society’s Christian Hardy as he politely suggests some audience participation towards the end of their set at Queen Elizabeth Hall. Profusely thanking everybody for coming,…
Category: Reviews
Album | Paper Aeroplanes – Little Letters
There’s a great moment in the tenth episode of 30 Rock in which someone asks Alec Baldwin’s character if he likes Phil Collins. Baldwin’s response is a droll and perfectly timed “I have two ears and a heart, don’t I?”…
EP | Julie Hawk – Julie Hawk EP
There are certain clichés that go hand in hand in the contemporary folk revival. Press shots taken on fallen trees. Bunting. Oh, Christ, so much bloody bunting. And, of course, birds. Hell, FFS understands the bird element so much we’ve…
Live | Dog is Dead @ Koko, London
“Dog is dead!”, a dyslexic’s version of Neitzche’s famous phrase, was the cry of the night at KOKO on an almost summery evening in north London. The floor was heaving and the three layers of balconies and theatre boxes…
Live | The Staves @ Scala, London
That The Staves’ two-day residency at London’s Scala coincides with a brief heat wave in the capital may be no coincidence: more warmth radiates from the audience to the stage and back again over the course of their set than…
EP | Tiny Ruins – Haunts
For many, Some Were Meant For Sea, the 2011 debut album by Tiny Ruins, arrived as a complete and perfect thing out of nowhere. Now, rather than ploughing on forwards, New Zealander Hollie Fullbrook is filling in the back story…
Live tweet | Laura Marling – Once I Was An Eagle
The For Folk’s Sake team live tweeted our first listen of Laura Marling’s forthcoming album Once I Was An Eagle. Read our knee-jerk reactions here…
EP | Nathan Ball – In Your Mind
With only one EP titled In Your Mind, he is yet to be signed – the third track from this debut effort however, will make you wonder why. In This Town floats through the salty soundwaves with a smooth harmony.
Album | Alessi’s Ark – The Still Life
It would be over the top to suggest that, at the age of 22, it was make-or-break time for Alessi Laurent-Marke. But there is no denying that Alessi’s Ark needed a third album of substance, something to erase words like…
Album | Haiku Salut – Tricolore
According to Haiku Salut themselves, the sound they make is “Baroque-Pop-Folktornic-Neo-Classical-Something-Or-Other”. Whatever that is, they can safely claim to be Derbyshire’s premier exponents of it – a fact demonstrated on Tricolore, which helpfully comes with a series of wonderful drawings…