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The folking review team is a small, dedicated group of people with a passion and a commitment for the folk, acoustic and Americana music scene. They review the latest releases, each in their own inimitable style…
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JON WILKS – Before I Knew What Had Begun I Had Already Lost (own label)
His fourth solo album sees Jon Wilks step away from the Birmingham-derived songs that were the mainstays of his last two releases and embrace those from which he’s drawn strength and inspiration during the recent difficult years, a period in which he fell seriously ill, having to spend three months ...
CAESAR SPENCER – Get Out Into Yourself (New Radio Records)
Caesar Spencer’s Get Out Into Yourself is an album whose press release says, “with a loose narrative that follows a protagonist journeying through different cultural landscapes, it unspools a tale laced with existential questions and the quest to find yourself in an ever-shifting world”. Now, for the three or so ...
OPEN ROAD – Skylark (Delfina Records DR428-OR01)
A duo comprising San Francisco native Lucia Comnes, now based in Italy, and West Coast songwriter John Palmer, Skylark is their debut release and brings together a mix of originals and covers, opening with the guitar driving, fiddle-backed co-write Southern gothic folk ‘No Hiding Place’, Comnes singing lead on an ...
SIMON MAYOR – Carolan (Acoustics CDACS 082)
Simon Mayor’s Carolan album was due for release on March 10 2023, but somehow or other the link found its way into my spam folder, so I’ve only just got to hear it. Carolan is subtitled Fantasias On Themes By Turlough O’Carolan, and if you know both Simon Mayor’s work ...
SINGLES BAR 89 – A round-up of recent EPs and singles
The daughter of Peter Lewis, founding member of 60s psych-folk icons Moby Grape (and who features on Stratocaster), and granddaughter of Oscar-winning actress Loretta Young, ARWEN LEWIS comes with an impressive lineage, However, her new six-track EP Under The Stars (OMAD Records) is evidence that she doesn’t need to cite ...
NOW VOYAGERS – The Best Of All Possible Worlds (own label)
Music can work on so many different levels and The Best Of All Possible Worlds, a concept album by Bath based musician Now Voyagers (Kim Green) does exactly that. You can play to it as a charming album of very good music, or you can study it and get so ...
LEVERET – Forms (LEVCD06)
Leveret – namely folk virtuoso fiddle player extraordinaire Sam Sweeney, concertina maestro Rob Harbron and magic melodeon player Andy Cutting are celebrating 10 years together with their latest album out 21st April 2023 entitled Forms. All three members of Leveret have an impressive list of legends they have accompanied such ...
DEL BARBER – Almanac (Acronym)
Eight albums in, the latest from the Canadian singer-songwriter takes its title from the idea of a guide to where you should be heading and what you might expect. As such, Almanac opens with the pedal steel lazing flow of ‘Something To Say’, a song about resisting the temptation to ...
ÍMAR – Awakening (BMANN005)
As often happens in folk music familiar faces will turn up in different combinations and that's the case with Glasgow based Ímar. Ryan Murphy (Mànran), Tomás Callister and Adam Rhodes (Mec Lir), Mohsen Amini (Talisk) and Adam Brown (RURA) originally met as teenagers through the Irish traditional music network Comhaltas ...
MATTHEWS SOUTHERN COMFORT – The Woodstock Album: 15 Songs of Peace, Love and Understanding (Must Have Records MHCD 114)
It’s 23 years since Iain Matthews topped the charts with his cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’ and he returns to the iconic festival now with The Woodstock Album, a covers concept album on which he and the band reinterpret songs from several of the artists who were on the bill. ...
GNOSS – Stretching Skyward (BFLY05CD)
Gnoss are a Scottish quartet, nominated three time for the Scot Trad Awards, who have their own distinct view of what traditional folk music is. Orcadians Aidan Moodie (vocals, guitar), and Graham Rorie (fiddle, mandolin and electric guitar) are joined by mainlanders Connor Sinclair (flute, whistle) and Craig Baxter (bodhran, ...
JOE HENRY – All The Eye Can See (Earmusic)
Joe Henry, with his new album All The Eye Can See, continues to write brand new sonic and quite secular scripture verse. And, with this secluded pandemic recording, he finds (metaphorically speaking!) the wind-swept simplicity of melodic words left in a gnostic cave of long-lost mystical thought. And that’s a ...
THE MADELEINE STEWART TRIO – The Madeleine Stewart Trio (own label MSTCD01)
There are some very talented alumni from the traditional music course at The Royal Scottish Conservatoire currently active in the thriving Glasgow folk scene. It’s no surprise then, that this eponymous debut from The Madeleine Stewart Trio, features three of them. What sets Madeleine herself apart, is that she travelled ...
LUCY FARRELL – We Are Only Sound (Hudson)
Born in Kent and now based in Canada, Farrell is probably better known for her contributions to the work of others, both live and in the studio, having lent her guitar, fiddle, viola and voice to such names as Chris Cleverley, Eliza Carthy and the Wayward Band, MG Boulter (who ...
EWAN MACINTYRE – Twenty First Century Fool (Broken Car Recordz BCR-005)
Twenty First Century Fool is the fourth solo album by Ewan Macintyre since his departure from Southern Tenant Folk Union, recorded in Montreal with a group of Quebecois musicians and completed on the Isle Of Skye. It marks Ewan’s first writing in Gaelic and is clearly a product of lockdown: ...
DAVID HOWLEY – For Venus (own label)
Born in Ireland and the founder member of We Banjo 3, Howley is a prodigious exponent of Irish folk and has performed alongside such diverse names as The Chieftains, Mumford & Sons, Altan and Billy Strings. Surprisingly though, For Venus is his first solo album, he taking charge of acoustic and ...
ALICE HOWE – Circumstance (KnowHowe KH0003)
Born in Massachusetts, Howe already has two impressive releases to her name but Circumstance, with its cocktail of southern rock, country, folk, classic soul and blues, produced and mostly co-written by Freebo, who also plays fretless bass, could be the one to propel to the next level. Recorded in Muscle ...
BEAU – Kingdom Of The Blind (Cherry Red BEAUKOTB1)
I’ve said it before and will inevitably say it again, Beau is a refreshing throwback to the 60s when political and social satire was afforded UK mainstream television slots, long before the more crass efforts of Spitting Image, and each week the troubadour of choice would deliver some pointed barb ...
GEORGE SANSOME & MATT QUINN – Sheffield Park (Grimdon Records GRICD007)
It seems that English folkies are taking a leaf out of their Scottish counterparts’ book by swapping musical partners like a barn dance’s introductory mixer. For fans it means more and different music and we can all applaud that. The latest pairing matches Granny’s Attic’s George Sansome and Dovetail Trio’s ...
TRAPPER SCHOEPP – Siren Songs (Grand Phony)
Trapper Schoepp releases Siren Songs on April 21st. Schoepp said of it, “What’s most important to me is to be a link in the chain of folk singers before and after my time”. To mention a couple: the album was recorded at Cash Cabin, originally Johnny Cash’s sanctuary to recharge, ...
YOUNG MARTYRS – Time Is Not On Our Side (own label)
Flying the Bristol flag for UK Americana, comprising frontman Tom Corneill, lead guitarist Simon Whitehead with Lee Cole and Rich Beeby providing the rhythm section, Time Is Not On Our Side is Young Martyrs second album, opening with the chiming sounds of ‘Let Me Know’, the song addressed to a ...
JAMES KERRY – Source (own label JK2022CD)
In the ordinary way of things I’m not a great fan of the melodeon. It’s fine for dancing where it can maintain a steady rhythm as well as providing a melody. But too many players confuse it with a musical instrument and that’s where it all goes wrong for me ...
ANGUS McOG – Cirrus (Gare Du Nord Records)
With his new album, Cirrus, Angus McOg (aka Italian folk singer Antonio Tavoni) paints with a brush stroke melodic beauty that could, perhaps, soundtrack the Degas painting, Rehearsal Of The Ballet Backstage. There’s piano taut tension, an introspective thought, an artistic blood pulse, sleight hesitation, an impressionistic blur -- all ...
GERAINT WATKINS – Aide-memoire (Last Music Co LMCD233)
A name that will be very familiar to anyone who peruses album credits, Watkins has played piano, accordion and guitar for a wealth of famous names, serving as sideman to the likes of McCartney, Lowe, Daltrey, Knopfler, Morrison, Edmunds and Gallagher. What is perhaps less well-known is that he also ...
DAN WHITEHOUSE – Reflections On The Glass Age (own label WTK005)
Following his ground-breaking album, Dan Whitehouse is now going on the road with Reflections On The Glass Age, a stripped down acoustic version of The Glass Age. Away from the electronica of the original, Dan sticks to acoustic guitar and is supported by Gustaf Ljunggren on piano and Billie Maree ...
CARTER SAMPSON – Gold (Horton)
Joined by frequent collaborator, Kyle Reid who contributes pedal steel, guitar and synths among other instruments, Oklahoma-songbird Sampson again taps into her heartland country roots for an album that balances piercing balladeering poignancy with punchier rootsy rock. Pedal steel sounds the opening notes of the title track, ‘Gold’, a roots ...
O’HOOLEY & TIDOW – Cloudheads (No Masters NMCD57)
The past few years have been eventful ones for Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow with the ballyhoo surrounding Gentleman Jack and then the arrival of a curly-haired sprog who is just about entering the “interesting” stage, I reckon. In fact, young Flynn is responsible, although mostly indirectly, for much of ...
UNCLE BARD & THE DIRTY BASTARDS – These Are The Days (Live) (SFMCD565)
You heard the new album by Uncle Bard & The Dirty Bastards? Who!!!? Uncle Bard & The Dirty Bastards – it’s a belter. Punk Music, I take it with a name like that? If that’s their band name, I bet the album’s called, ‘Never Mind the Marriages’? A little less ...
NATALIE MACMASTER & DONNELL LEAHY – Canvas (Linus Entertainment 270787)
Two of the world's top Celtic fiddle players and known as Canada’s reigning stars of Celtic music– husband and wife team Donnell Leahy and Natalie MacMaster have recently released their third album together entitled Canvas. (Their cumulative album sales have topped one million and have sell out live performances across ...
HACK-POETS GUILD – Blackletter Garland (Oli Records TPLP1690CD)
Once in while a record comes along and leaves you speechless which is how I was when I first played Blackletter Garland. Let’s start with some facts. Hack-Poets Guild are Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann supported by Barney Morse-Brown, Lawrence Hunt, Pete Flood, Meraud Fergerson and Gerry Diver ...
ROBBIE CUMMING – Choons Vol 1 & 2 (KWSBCM19CD)
Robbie Cumming. You might not instantly recognise the name, particularly in the context of music. However, even for someone watching as little TV as I do, Cumming is recognisable as the man who has created a wonderful BBC4 show Canal Boat Diaries, tales of the canal on the ‘Naughty Lass’ ...
SARAH–JANE SUMMERS & JUHANI SILVOLA – Sølvstrøk (Heilo HCD7384)
Sølvstrøk (Silverstroke) is an ambitious album. Sarah-Jane Summers and Juhani Silvola are already a widely acclaimed duo, but Sarah-Jane has long dreamed of ‘super sizing’ their music to an orchestral level. Seeing a performance by Oslo Chamber Orchestra led to Sarah-Jane and Juhani writing for and playing with them. From ...
THE YOUNG’UNS – Tiny Notes (Hudson Records HUD036CD)
It has been mentioned that The Young’Uns are outgrowing their name. After all, it’s twenty years since they discovered folk music in the back room of a pub in Stockton-on-Tees and, while they are not yet elder statesmen, they have amassed an impressive body of work and gained a certain ...
THE CURSE OF K K HAMMOND – Death Roll Blues (KKHCD001)
I like it when an album title tells you exactly what you're going to get. With a title like Death Roll Blues you know that it won't be clapping along and joining the sing-a-long choruses. Instead what you get is an incredible collection of modern blues inspired by old-time Delta ...
MELISSA RUTH – Bones (no label details)
Replete with Americana tinged instrumentation and lyrics coloured by vast historical context, singer, songwriter, and music educator Melissa Ruth’s latest effort, Bones, take listeners on an explorative journey through what Ruth herself describes as North-Country Western music. In spite of the singer’s own northern roots, the arrangements and songwriting throughout Bones ...
RACHEL BAIMAN – Common Nation Of Sorrow (Signature Sounds SIG-CD-2144)
As the title would suggest, coloured by her bluegrass roots, Baiman’s third album, Common Nation Of Sorrow, is often rooted in a commentary on contemporary America, the oppressed and dispossessed united in their sufferings and the burden of economic tyranny, though such themes very readily translate beyond her native shores ...
REG MEUROSS – Stolen From God (Hatsongs Records HAT025)
Stolen From God is an album that a lot of us have been looking forward to for a long while. Reg Meuross has taken up his narrative style again to bring us a song cycle telling the story of the transatlantic slave trade. In support, Reg has recruited Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, ...
CRUEL FOLK – Far To Fall (Cruelfolk002)
There is an England old and merry, sunny and glorious where Englande and olde have an ‘e’ on the end of them, where merrie has an ‘ie’ at the end of it. This is the Englande of our dreams. It’s sunlit, it’s blue skies. It may be winter but it’s ...
MICHAEL JOHNATHON – Garden Of Silence (PoetMan Records PMR70034)
Incredibly prolific, Johnathon has released a previous twenty-one albums, with one a year since 2012, published five books, a play, composed an opera, regularly performs with symphony orchestras, produces and writes a syndicated radio show and has created three volunteer organisations. Garden Of Silence, his latest, returns him to one ...
MULL HISTORICAL SOCIETY – Archaeology: Complete Recordings 2000-2004 (Demon Records)
Mull Historical Society’s four-disc Archaeology: Complete Recordings 2000—2004 proves that while “Daddy takes the T-bird away” every once in a while, there’s still quite a bit of “fun, fun, fun” to be found in the grooves of pop music that blends rock, folk, psych, crazy electric sounds, and really great ...
THE BLUE HIGHWAYS – Out On The Line (own label)
The Blue Highways release Out On The Line on March 31st. One of the lines in ‘Nobody Lives Here Any More’ (below) is “Rules are made to be broken”. So…to start where I’d usually finish: The Blue Highways are on tour at the end of March and April – and ...
ANDREW GABBARD – Cedar City Sweetheart (Colemine Records)
Andrew Gabbard’s Cedar City Sweetheart proves there’s always room for yet another melodic pedal guitar infused Rodeo Sweetheart record that oozes Neil Young, The Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, (bits of) Seatrain, Country Gazette, and countless other bands that drank from the downhome stilled magical brew the folky 70’s elixir. Sometimes, ...
ANDY HEDGES – Roll On, Cowboys (Andy Hedges)
Let me admit, I’m not exactly steeped in the cowboy songs idiom, though I certainly trawled through some collections by the Lomaxes et al. at the start of my own so-called-singing career. But when I saw the Andy Hedges album Roll On, Cowboys, due for release on March 26 2023, ...
MEGSON – What Are We Trying To Say? (EDJ Records EDJ033)
It’s four years since we last heard from Megson, which is too long but we all know what happened in the interim. What Are We Trying To Say? is their thirteenth album and, as before, they are supported by John Parker on double. All the rest: writing, playing, singing and ...
DAVID HARLEY – So Sound You Sleep (ISBN 979-8377897699)
Apart from saying, “As you’ll see from his website, David Harley is a Shropshire lad, now living in Cornwall, who has played guitar since the 1970’s” I won’t give any further introduction – check out David’s website or the folking.com review of Introduction to Nashville Tuning for Guitar: https://folking.com/david-harley-introduction-to-nashville-tuning-for-guitar-weald-alice-music/ David ...
JOY DUNLOP – Caoir (Sradag Music SRM008)
The phrase multi-talented is sometimes over-used, but I’ve no doubt that it applies to Joy Dunlop. An award winning Gaelic singer and step dancer, Joy is also a Gaelic language advocate, educator, broadcaster and regular weather presenter on BBC Scotland. Her musical career itself has consisted of such a wide ...
KATHRYN ROBERTS & SEAN LAKEMAN – Almost A Sunset (Iscream Music ISCD20)
It has been five years since Kathryn and Sean’s last album of new music. There was a retrospective album of recorded back catalogue a couple of years ago but everyone had to do something during lockdown. Almost A Sunset is their seventh album and it’s the real thing. I think ...
OWEN MOORE – Songs From The Shamrock Bar (PJO Records)
Songs From The Shamrock Bar, subtitled A 10-Year Anthology, and timely available for St Patrick’s Day, this, as it says, gathers together around an hour’s worth of songs from the relaxingly warm-voiced Dublin-born multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter’s past decade, and, as per the title, with a decided Irish theme running through. Racing ...
COLIN MACDUFF – The Past And The Sky (own label)
Colin Macduff’s The Past And The Sky is home-spun like a Tweed River Scottish fisherman’s thatched fishing creel, filled with folk music with the rich melodic colour of a reflective deep depth rainbow trout. Put simply: This is a lovely Scottish singer-songwriter record filled with acoustic care, hushed passion, a ...
RURA – Dusk Moon (RURACD005)
Rura release Dusk Moon, their fourth studio album, on March 17th. I’ve previously described Rura’s music as “engaging the spirit”, the notes that come with the album describe it as an “intoxicating sound”. There’s a wealth of very good music and bands coming from Scotland at the moment – and ...
BEN & DOM – His Head Lies Heavy (La La La Records)
That’ll be Ben See and Dominic Stichbury, both London-based choir leaders, singers and songwriters, the latter the founder of Chaps Choir, a 20-strong project that encourages male expression through singing. Together they’re a voice duo, Ben the high register, Dom the low, who largely sing unaccompanied – at times utilising ...
BRIGID O’NEILL—The Truth & Other Stories (Goldrush Records)
Irish singer-songwriter Brigid O’ Neill, with her new album The Truth & Other Stories, lightly skips tossed stones like thoughtful opinions across the early evening dusk Irish Sea waves. And she has a voice that floats with atmospheric turbulent concern, yet it touches the warm Earth born coffee house folk ...
KAREN JONAS – The Restless (own label)
Over the course of five albums, the Maryland-born singer has established herself as very much a country voice with old school leanings. This time round, however, she’s in far darker alt-country often bluesier mood on a collection of frequently doom-hung songs exploring vulnerability. The Restless opens in France with the ...
BEN WALKER – Banish Air From Air (Folk Room Records FRR2301)
As with his 2019 solo debut, Echo, Walker has enlisted the help of an array of different vocalists to give voice to material that ranges from the traditional to three numbers marking his first foray into songwriting rather than only a composer famed for his fingerstyled guitar work. With backing ...
FRANKIE ARCHER – Live at Aces & Eights, Tufnell Park, London – 19th February 2023
I first came across Frankie Archer at the Love Folk festival in Southport this year, playing a showcase session on the busk stage. She came with a recommendation from Jim Moray, no less, who was headlining on the Friday but said he was coming back on Saturday just to see ...
THE WILDWOODS – Foxfield Saint John (own label)
The Wildwoods are a duo that is really a trio: husband and wife Noah and Chloe Gose from Lincoln, Nebraska are joined by bassist Andrew Vaggalis on their third full length album, Foxfield Saint John. Lincoln is pretty much in the centre of the contiguous United States so it’s no ...
IAN ROLAND – The Woodwide Web (Ditto)
You’ll be familiar with the world wide web, but research has shown that, beneath every forest and wood, there is a complex underground web of roots, fungi and bacteria helping to connect trees and plants to one another – The Woodwide Web. Nearly 500 million years old, this subterranean social ...
GILLEBRÌDE MacMILLAN – Sèimh (own label DEALAS003)
Gillebrìde MacMillan is a lecturer at Glasgow University specialising in the Gaelic language. He’s also a singer, a songwriter and a composer known for film and television music. He’s also a secret that the Scots seem to have kept from us benighted sassenachs for far too long. Sèimh (The State ...
THE QUIGGS – Threads (Lowland Recordings LOWLAND 022)
The Quiggs are a Scottish folk duo: Stephen Quigg is a former member of The McCalmans who reversed the accepted tradition by bringing back his future wife Pernille from a tour of Scandinavia. If you are familiar with The McCalmans’ music you will immediately get the Quiggs. Threads, their fourth ...
THE IAN WALKER BAND – We Come To Sing (Vangel Recordings VANCD16)
There’s something engagingly old-school about the Ian Walker Band’s album We Come To Sing, released on the 16th January 2023. Perhaps that’s not surprising, since Ian has been performing for many years, and his songs have been sung by artists as varied as Dick Gaughan, Roy Bailey, and the Yetties ...
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