The word ‘legend’ is rarely as acutely appropriate to a musician as it is to Will Oldham. It is so useful not because of stature, but because of mythologizing, because of the whole hagiography, the deifying of the thing. In…
Category: Reviews
Album | James Yorkston – I Was A Cat From A Book
James Yorkston seems to be releasing music and gigging all the time, but this is actually his first self-penned record since ‘When the Haar Rolls In’ four years ago. From the first note, you realise how much you’ve missed him.…
Festivals | Friday at the Cambridge Folk Festival
The Cambridge Folk Festival is officially the most chilled out festival we’ve ever been to, and certainly the only one where the entire crowd at the main stage sit down in the chairs they’ve brought themselves. With easy access, friendly…
Festivals | Thursday at the Cambridge Folk Festival
The Cambridge Folk Festival is not renowned for its sexiness. Beards? Yes. Beer bellies? Check. Family fun, funny hats and frolics in the mud. But sexiness? Not so much. So imagine my surprise when I arrived on Thursday afternoon to…
Album | The Unthanks with Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band – Diversions vol. 2
The band is incredibly versatile, from march music offset with sparse, mournful arrangements on the beautiful ‘Trimdon Grange Explosion’, to near classical arrangements on the Prokofiev-reminiscent ‘My Lagan Love’ and the James Bond pyrotechnics in the new rendition of ‘Queen of Hearts’. In its tones and timbre, every track is as reassuringly traditional as logs on a fireplace, but they crackle with a new wit in combinations that, without contradiction, show British folk – and brass band music – at its most innovative.
Live | Eugene McGuinness @ The Lexington, London, 26th June 2012
Eugene McGuinness had achieved lots of things before we came to know about him when ‘Lion’ was added to the 6Music playlists. Apologies for us being a little behind the times on this one, though it seems we’ve rocked up…
Festivals | Cambridge Folk Festival – Part Une
Thursday sees the equivalent of a religious holiday for the folk world kick off as the Cambridge Folk Festival opens for its 48th year. One of the longest-running in the UK, the CFF was first held in 1965 and featured…
Album | Family Band – Grace & Lies
In their sophomore record, Grace & Lies, Family Band juxtapose two fundamentally opposing and paradoxical concepts, and intertwine them to form a being that thrums with life’s most profound questions. The album begins with the unsettlingly with ‘Night Song’, centred…
Singles Round-up | Dog Is Dead, Alberta Cross, Alexander Wolfe, Tashaki Miyaki, James Canty & Church School
Dog is Dead – Glockenspiel Song When I was first this track I did a double take; wasn’t this quirky, upbeat pop number from Nottingham was released two years ago? It turns out I was right – after releasing ‘Glockenspiel…
EP | Bonnie Prince Billy – Now Here’s My Plan
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if modern songs were given the kind of interpretative renditions born by traditional music – if more cover versions consciously shaped meaning, like Bellowhead, rather than merely adapting style, like the Mystery…