Welcome to the folking.com review section.
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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PAUL M COX – Sunset Over Stillwater (White Elephant Records WER 029)
It’s fascinating how an artist who has been around for a while heaves to on your horizon even though you’ve been oblivious to their existence. As I recall, Paul M Cox emailed us to ask if we’d like to hear his new album, Sunset Over Stillwater. Naturally we eagerly accepted ...
ELIZA CARTHY & THE RESTITUTION – Queen Of The Whirl (Hem Hem Records)
Following in Kate Rusby’s footsteps, Carthy has celebrated her 30 years in the business with Queen Of The Whirl, an album of new recordings, featuring her live band (Saul Rose, David Delarre, Phil Alexander, Ben Seal, Willy Molleson), from songs across her illustrious career, initially released as four EPs and ...
EWAN MACFARLANE – Milk (Royale Stag Records)
Ewan MacFarlane’s Milk is a brilliant soul-roots rock album which showcases EM’s honeyed asteroid vocals and clever songwriting. This record is a long-playing love letter to his wife Jo, and is brimful with (Thank you, John Martyn!) ample “grace and danger”. The title track, ‘Milk’, begins with a gritty guitar ...
ELIZA DELF – Into The Wilderness (Peace In The Head EJDC001)
A Norwich-based folk-noir singer-songwriter inspired by the subversive folk tales of Angela Carter and whose vocal range has drawn comparisons to Kate Bush, Into The Wilderness, produced by Jon Loomes, is Delf’s debut album, the songs featuring the usual drums, guitar and bass but also more orchestral colours from brass, ...
THE CARRIVICK SISTERS – Illustrated Short Stories (own label CARRICKSCD10)
It’s been nine years since Devon twin sisters duo Charlotte and Laura released their last studio album. And, with its mix of American bluegrass and English folk influences and featuring only the siblings, Illustrated Short Stories is a fine reminder of what we’ve been missing in the interim. Released with ...
BROOKS WILLIAMS & DAN WALSH – Fortune By Design (own label BWDW-01)
As they vie for the position of the man who’ll play with anybody (a title previously held by John Kirkpatrick) there has been surprise that Brooks Williams and Dan Walsh haven’t gone head to before now. After all, acoustic guitar and clawhammer banjo are natural bedfellows and the chaps sing ...
LUKE DANIELS – The Cobhers (Gael GAELCD022)
Luke Daniels is a restless spirit. Each time I see or hear him, he’s doing something almost diametrically opposite to his previous project, and we’re never quite sure where the next dalliance will take him. I remember the embarrassment of his struggle with the clockwork polyphon machine that refused to ...
RAGGED UNION – Round Feet, Chrome Smile (Shining Castle Music)
Ragged Union released their new album Round Feet, Chrome Smile recently. It has nine tracks, mostly written by Geoff Union. The band are from Boulder County, Colorado, formed about ten years ago. I need to make this point pedantically for UK readers to highlight that it would otherwise be easy ...
JANICE BURNS & JON DORAN – No More The Green Hills (own label JBJD002)
She from Glasgow, he from Gloucestershire and both now based in Newcastle, former finalists for the 2019 Young Folk Award, the duo now make their album debut, No More The Green Hills, bringing her mandolin, piano, tenor guitar, piano and his bouzouki, acoustic, and fiddle, the pair both playing harmonium, ...
SINGLES BAR 83 – A round-up of recent EPs and singles
TALMORNEY is 50ish Forest of Dean folk artist Matthew Macer-Wright who, inspired by the likes of The Unthanks, Vaughan Williams, June Tabor, Tori Amos and Natalie Merchant, has been drawn to compose new music to a collection of anonymous seventeenth century ballads (adapted from David Stell's pamphlet ‘Ballads and Music ...
CATFISH KEITH – Still I Long To Roam (FTRCD020)
Still I Long To Roam is Catfish Keith’s new album, his 21st album in a long and acclaimed career. He’s still winning awards – in 2022, he’s won the Blues Blast Music Awards for Best Acoustic Blues Album (for Land Of The Sky) and Best Acoustic Guitar. He still deserves ...
BREABACH – Fàs (Breabach Records BRE007CD)
Breabach’s Fàs is a miorbhuileach (aka wonderful!) Scottish folk album that avoids the commercial big shops on Princes Street. Rather, it strolls down the backstreets of Edinburgh, enjoys a Belhaven pint (or two!), contemplates a walk onto heights of Arthur’s Seat, and then conjures the beauty of the Firth of ...
SAMUEL JAMES TAYLOR – Wild Tales And Broken Hearts (own label)
Samuel James Taylor released Wild Tales And Broken Hearts on October 21st. You can’t help but look favourably on an album by a man who a) adds Samuel so he doesn’t appear cocky in the folk world b) has been in the music business for twenty years getting support from ...
WORDS OF A FIDDLER’S DAUGHTER – The Tears Of Jenny Greenteeth (Under The Eaves UTE 006)
Where to start? “This is a tale from a time younger than ours, where love and forgiveness triumphantly overcome fear, sadness and greed”, says Jessie Summerhayes in her sleeve notes. It would be easy to say that The Tears Of Jenny Greenteeth is typical of Words Of A Fiddler’s Daughter ...
JAMES KEELAGHAN – Second-Hand (Borealis Records BCD276)
James Keelaghan’s Second-Hand is yet another collection of brilliant songs that, somehow, ventures into a folk music fourth dimension where hope, tragedy, psychological insight, literary metaphor, and intense beauty are compressed into a continuous magical melody. For the initiate: Canadian James Keelaghan is a Juno Award winner. Not only that, ...
PAULINE VALLANCE – The World’s A Gift (own label PV002)
A singer/songwriter and clarsach (Gaelic harp) player from Ayrshire, The World’s A Gift, her third album, produced by and featuring James Grant, explores the theme of legacy, sparked by the loss of both parents within a year of each other and having to go through the stuff left behind. That ...
CORACLE – Murmuration (Tam Records)
As Murmuration is Coracle’s first album, I didn’t know what to expect from it. All I knew was what the accompanying publicity told me, and that suggested it was going to be a bit different. To start, Coracle consists of three very different musicians who came together remotely during lockdown, ...
STEELEYE SPAN – Live At The Rainbow Theatre 1974 (Chrysalis CRVX1485)
You may have noticed that, earlier this year, Chrysalis released the definitive collection of Steeleye Span’s albums from 1972 to 1983, regarded by many as their heyday. As bonuses, the box included three live albums and the second of these is Live At The Rainbow Theatre 1974. This is the ...
CHRIS WHILE AND JULIE MATTHEWS – Women Of The World (FatCat FATCD047)
The longest surviving UK female duo (and also with their own solo careers), as the title suggests their latest album, the songs of Women Of The World, initially switching between the two, is a celebration of women power and of those who have inspired them across the years, just as ...
DAN WHITEHOUSE – Voices From The Cones (WTK 002)
Dan Whitehouse continues his glass sequence with Voices From The Cones, a song cycle based on stories from the glass-making industry of Stourbridge. The song cycle became a live show and this double-CD set presents both forms: the songs and the complete show with John Edgar’s narration. I do believe ...
THE MAGPIES – Undertow (Gilded Lily GLWCD 18)
Since the release of their debut album two years ago, Polly Bolton has flown the nest to be replaced by clawhammer banjo player Kate Griffin alongside founder members Bella Gaffney) guitar, double bass) and Holly Brandon (fiddle), making her presence felt both as performer and songwriter. Indeed Undertow opens with ...
SUE HARDING – Darkling (own label)
Sue Harding lives in Somerset and has been writing, playing and singing for quite a while now in several guises including Angel Ridge and Harding McCabe. Darkling is her second solo album, written during lockdown and supported by producer Josh Clark with cello by Beth Porter on two tracks. I ...
STEVE PLEDGER – What Tomorrow Knows album launch (Durham Town Hall, 6th October 2022)
Steve Pledger is the perfect example of modern protest singer, enriching his songs with clarity of thought, sublime guitar skills and the ability to hold the attention of the listener. His is not music for the background. His inspirations include Billy Bragg, Martyn Joseph and Bruce Cockburn and, as such, ...
DAPHNE PARKER POWELL – The Starter Wife (Pleasure Loves Company)
One of the year’s most intriguing titles, The Starter Wife, Louisiana-based Powell’s sixth album comes in the wake of a painful divorce and arrives awash with themes of grief, betrayal, co-dependency, abandonment, and personal worth as she addresses the process of dismantling the darkness that engulfed her and refusing to ...
ANGELINE MORRISON – The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs Of The Black Experience (Topic TSCT611)
Released to mark Black History Month, produced by Eliza Carthy, who also arranged the strings and plays violin, with Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne on anglo concertina and melodeon, the Cornwall-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist calls The Sorrow Songs ‘re-storying’. Which is to say it seeks to reclaim the stories of people in the ...
SAM SWEENEY – Escape That (Hudson Records HUD032CD)
Some artists raise expectations. They inspire confidence that anything with their name on it, is going to be good. For me, Sam Sweeney is such an artist, and I’m happy to report that Escape That didn’t disappoint. Not that I’m saying that this is a predictable album, because it feels ...
VARIOUS ARTISTS – Plúirín Na mBan – A Woman’s Love (Cló Iar-Chonnachta CICD091)
Think back thirty years and you may remember A Woman’s Heart, the album and the song that launched Eleanor McEvoy’s career. Plúirín Na mBan - A Woman’s Love is not a sequel, although there was one, and is an entirely different concept. Originally released in 1993 with tracks dating back ...
THE WATERSONS - Frost And Fire (Topic Records)
Like all stems, branches, and ancient roots search for all the circulus melodies of fallen Eden, the Watersons’ Frost And Fire songs are about the cycle of death and rebirth that have been “frosted” and “fired” in both pagan magic and christen ritual. And thank you, Lal, Mike, Norma and ...
POLLY PAULUSMA–The Pivot On Which The World Turns (Wild Sound)
Polly Paulusma’s new album, The Pivot On Which The World Turns, is a lovely labyrinth with enough melodic twists and feminine turns to make any inhabiting Minotaur grin and, despite his rather shady past, offer up a clever tune of his own design. This album has that kind of power ...
THE PITMAN POETS – Bare Knuckle (own label)
As The Pitman Poets embark on their second farewell tour (probably not worth asking) they release a new album, Bare Knuckle. For the uninitiated, the Poets are Billy Mitchell, Bob Fox, Benny Graham and Jez Lowe; three string players and an accordionist with Mitchell adding harmonica. All four, as you’ve ...
THE VILLAGE – The Bells Of St. Wystan’s (own label)
Phil Matthews a.k.a. The Village is a man rooted in the land and legends of his home region – the rural East Midlands. Superficially, The Bells Of St. Wystan’s would seem to be more of the same but Phil is no Tolkien wannabe nor a “hello sky, hello trees” type ...
THOMAS BULL – A Fast Running Train Whistles Down (own label)
Sometimes a record appears out of the blue that has the potential to be very important. Thomas Bull has recorded seven Woody Guthrie songs; not reworked them exactly but freshened them up for the 21st century in other ways. A Fast Running Train Whistles Down is a chapter title from ...
BARRY NISBET – The Springbank Voyage (Rattle Rig RRIG221)
In 1908, five Shetlanders joined the crew of Clyde-built 4-mast sailing barque, the Springbank, headed via the dread Cape Horn to Mexico. For Barry Nisbet, this boyhood tale (storyteller Lawrence Tulloch is generously sampled) has more personal connections. For Shetlander Nisbet has also sailed these same Pacific seas. It’s what ...
SINGLES BAR 82 – A round-up of recent EPs and singles
Featuring producer Pete Ord on guitar and bass, Kath Ord and violin and viola, pianist Jen Ord and Archie Moss on melodeon, 2019 Young Folk Awards winner queer folk singer-songwriter and interpreter, MADDIE MORRIS makes her studio recording debut with Upstream (Haystack HAYCD105), opening with ‘Down By The Greenwood Side’, ...
SPROATLY SMITH – River Wye Suite (own label)
Sproatly Smith’s River Wye Suite, despite Heraclitus’s contention that “No man ever steps in the same river twice”, certainly drinks from the same sourced waters into which John Lennon suggested we should “Turn off your Mind/Relax and float downstream”. Indeed, “Tomorrow Never” (ever) “Knows”. This is dreamy and sometimes dark ...
DROPKICK MURPHYS – This Machine Still Kills Fascists (Dummy Luck Music)
The title, of course, refers to the slogan Woody Guthrie sported on his guitar and, following the path of Bragg and Wilco, This Machine Still Kills Fascists, an all acoustic recording, comprises unpublished lyrics collected by frontman Ken Casey from the archives and set to music to form ten songs ...
STEVE PLEDGER – What Tomorrow Knows (Noisy Dog Records NDCD03)
Every so often, an album comes along and hits you like a tsunami! This has happened to me this week when I have had the honour of doing the first review of Steve Pledgers long awaited new album – What Tomorrow Knows. It was a download (but did not detract ...
CROCK OF BONES – Celtic Crossbones (own label)
Crock of Bones are a North London band and, with a growing and increasingly acclaimed set of live performances behind them, have recently released Celtic Crossbones, their first full-length CD. Until I heard the CD, the band were unknown to me, but this is one of the times when you ...
JENNIFER CROOK – The Broken Road Back Home (Transatlantic Roots)
Based in Bath, conceived during the pandemic, former Radio 2 Young Tradition finalist and harpist, The Broken Road Back Home is the pure-voiced Crook’s fifth album, her first in five years, although some of the songs have been awaiting an appropriate home for a decade, recorded live in the studio, ...
RANAGRI – Tradition II (own label)
Ranagri are an Anglo-Irish folk band who stretch the boundaries of what folk music is, so it may be surprising that Tradition II is the follow-up to previous album Tradition. This ten track album takes traditional songs, some more well known than others, but puts the Ranagri stamp onto every ...
GEOFF MULDAUR – His Last Letter: The Amsterdam Project (Moon River Music)
While his ex-wife Maria may be better known, primarily on account of her 1973 hit ‘Midnight At The Oasis’, and more prolific in terms of albums, Geoff Muldaur has arguably had the more successful if low profile career, as songwriter and composer, ranging through folk, blues and jazz (he recorded ...
KEEPING IT LIVE – Banterfest 2022 – Mike Wistow reports
Banterfest 2022 – or ‘The First Annual Banterfest’ as it may well come to be known – was held in Welbourn, Lincolnshire, from September 16th – 18th. It’s reckoned that about 40 people saw the Sex Pistols in Manchester Free Trade Hall in June 1976 ….. but thousands of punks ...
JAKE BLOUNT -The New Faith (Smithsonian Folkways)
A scholar of Black American music, for his new label debut Blount follows 2020’s highly acclaimed Spider Tales with The New Faith, an album of dystopian Afrofuturism that, conceived, written, and recorded during lockdowns, and likely inspired by Octavia Butler’s 1993 novel Parable Of The Sower, offers radical arrangements of ...
SYKESMARTIN – Unquenching Fire (Dragonfly Roots DRCD009)
SykesMartin sounds like one of those industrial processes that we had to learn about in chemistry lessons and that’s not a bad analogy. Miranda Sykes and Hannah Martin, with a little help from Phillip Henry, create a remarkable musical chemistry on their debut project as a duo. Unquenching Fire is ...
SONS OF THE EAST – Palomar Parade (own label)
Australia’s Sons of the East’s Palomar Parade confronts the fact that (Thank you, Carl Sagan!) “There are more stars in the universe than all the sand grains on Earth”. To that, my friend, Kilda Defnut, replied, “There’s a whole lot of indie folk bands, too, but The Sons Of The ...
BONFIRE RADICALS – The Space Between (own label BR-02)
Bonfire Radicals describe themselves as Birmingham’s (un)traditional folk band. An interesting claim and their second album, The Space Between, supplies plenty of evidence to back it up. They draw musical inspiration from various traditions, then blend them with modern rock and jazz styles. Sometimes riotous, sometimes more gentle, often playful ...
SIOBHAN MILLER – Bloom (Songprint SPR005CD)
I loved Siobhan’s early work, fell out with her over Mercury but we kept faith with each other and now we have her fifth solo album, Bloom. It’s a familiar mixture of traditional songs, covers and covers that sound like traditional songs. Siobhan is still pushing the envelope but not ...
FARA – Energy Islands (FARA003)
The (predominantly) Orcadian band Fara have recently released their third album, Energy Islands. The band came together at the Orkney Folk Festival in 2014 and have since won music awards in multiple countries. Three of the founding band members are on the new album – Jeanna Leslie, Catriona Price and ...
KRAMIES – Kramies (Hidden Shoal Records)
Kramies self-titled album drips with an impressionistic paintbrush. And then it slow dances and sings (without an umbrella!) in dramatic and very cinematic rain. It will certainly appeal to the gothic dimensional sound of (the great) Mercury Rev. But it also creeps with a psych underground flickered footstep of Pink ...
HOLLIE ROGERS – Criminal Heart (own label)
Hollie Rogers releases Criminal Heart on September 9th. I don’t look at the either singles or album charts much nowadays but if I say this album has both individual songs and a ‘whole album’ feel that mean it wouldn’t be out of place in either, it lets you know several ...
DAVID BENJAMIN BLOWER – Innocence And Experience (own label)
There’s been a spate of releases over the past couple of years with artists setting to music the works of poets such as Dickinson and Yeats. Now, the Birmingham musician and theologian adds to the list with his interpretation of eight selections from Blake’s Songs Of Innocence And Experience, (note: ...
LUKE SITAL-SINGH – Dressing Like A Stranger (Nettwerk Records)
Luke Sital-Singh’s fourth album Dressing Like A Stranger is the soundtrack to my recent food order at my local Festival Foods’ kiosk that sold burgers and bratwursts for the benefit of a local fundraising cause. It’s a common summer Midwest Wisconsin thing. A young woman, who had given her Saturday ...
CHRIS FOX – In Plain Sight (own label)
Chris Fox’s previous album, the excellent From The Shadows, was released in 2019. Then his career went onto the back burner as the country shut down and he slipped under people’s radar again, mine included I’m afraid. I sincerely hope that the same fate does not await his new CD, ...
Cropredy Capers 2022 – Campie tells all
A return to Fairport’s Cropredy Convention was eagerly awaited by thousands of people who would be lining the field in Cropredy, Oxfordshire in the hottest August for a long time, mostly armed with sun cream, copious bottles of water and beer, sunhats, battery operated fans and cooling water sprays to ...
PHIL LANGRAN – Falling Light (Longshore Drift LOD002)
Produced by and featuring Chris Pepper (percussion) and Boo Hewerdine (guitar, keys), normally to be found fronting The Phil Langran Band, here the Oxford singer-songwriter steps out in solo frame with Aaron Catlow on fiddle, cellist Pete Harvey and Gustaf Ljunggren on acoustic slide. It’s a mellow, laid back affair, ...
JOHN McCUTCHEON – Leap! (own label)
You could never accuse Wisconsin-born McCutcheon of resting on his laurels. Over the course of a 50-year career he’s released 43 albums and during the pandemic outbreak he wrote some 54 songs, 18 of which appear on Leap!, his third release since 2020, co-produced by Bob Dawson with contributions including ...
STARRY SKIES – Small Wonders (Foxstar Records)
Starry Skies’ new album, Small Wonders, is a pop-folk (and sometimes) rock record that proves, even after all the years, this band from Glasgow cares about “Terry and Julie” as they “cross over the river.” And yes, there’s still “a heaven” to be “found in a wild flower”. Thank you ...
KATIE GRACE HARRIS – The Toledo Sessions (Triumph Recordings TR1001)
Named for her father’s blue Triumph Toledo she travelled round in as a child, collecting mum for her nursing shifts, singing the songs of James Taylor, Ralph McTell and The Spinners, fresh for a start turn at the Purbeck Valley Folk Festival The Toledo Sessions is the Southampton born and ...
BARNEY KENNY – The Seaton Tapes (own label)
Folking.com reviewed Barney Kenny’s EP The Minstrel Boy back in 2020, and very good it is too, with Barney supporting his own very able vocals on a variety of instruments, with additional support from Catherine Ashcroft on Uilleann pipes and whistle. His new album The Seaton Tapes (released on August ...
NIGEL PARRY – Tales Of Common Folk, Salt & Sweet Kisses (own label)
A CD arriving from New Zealand is not an everyday occurrence but, nevertheless, a welcome one. We first came upon singer-songwriter Nigel Parry via a single ‘The Day The Bank Closed Its Doors’, the penultimate track on his new album, Tales Of Common Folk, Salt & Sweet Kisses. It’s a ...
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