TOM HOUSTON has a new digital EP, River Is Me, a set of six acoustic songs. It opens with the title track, a languid song at one with the natural world and partly inspired by a Maori proverb. It’s decorated with piano and cello although there is a lot more going on besides. Tom’s Scottish ancestry comes out in ‘Smiling At The Croft’ which involves a mermaid, a grey seal listening to jazz, an eagle and a poacher. Whatever he’s on we’d like some, please. But remember, “don’t inhale”.
‘Backs To The Wall’ revisits a song from Tom’s debut album. It’s richly arranged without the arrangement being intrusive, something true of all these tracks which speaks to Neill MacColl’s production. Kate St. John’s piano does a lot of work on ‘Mud On The Doorway’, which seems to be about winter but it’s accordion that leads ‘Salt And Rope’ which comes across a jolly seafaring song until you realise it’s about the slave trade – what a song. Finally, the gently funky ‘Lingering’ is about “the chosen few/the ghosts of causes fought and lost and lingering” which is as perfect a summary as you could wish for. This is a splendid collection of songs.
https://www.tomhouston.org/
Speak Wreck Speak! is an EP put together by a number of artists: ADRIAN CROWLEY, SIMON FISHER TURNER, STEPHEN MURRAY, SEAN O’HAGAN and MIKE SMALLE. It’s part of a series of releases about shipwrecks and storms in the 19th century. The opening track is ‘The Sound Of Light’, a poem by Murray with music by Smalle about sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Co. Clare. Little is known about them other than the fact that were foreign and known as “the yellow men”.
Next is the lengthy ‘The Wreck Of The Julia’ by Crowley and O’Hagan, part spoken, part sung and composed in a reportage style. Again, the wreck took place off Ireland, Galway this time, proving how dangerous the Atlantic coast is. The Julia was carrying timber and much of the story is taken up with how much of it disappeared, despite attempts by the authorities to safeguard it. Last comes ‘Exile’ by Turner and Smalle, based on a letter written home to Ireland by a man living in New York, “very sad, very lonely, very poor”, and perhaps the strangest track in the set. A fascinating piece of work.
https://bringyourownhammerpresents.bandcamp.com/album/speak-wreck-speak
ON THE LASH are a quartet from Michigan making their recording debut with an EP, Fireside. They are labelled “Irish” because Americans can’t distinguish any random countries in “Yurp” but in this case they do play some real Irish music, notably in the shape of ‘Tommy Clifford’s/The Rookery’ so we’ll let them off. That’s followed by an old Scottish song of roguery, ‘Donald MacGillivray’. It sounds very American but retains the original Scottish dialect words.
The set opens with ‘John Riley’, not the English song so probably an On The Lash original and linked to the legend of Billy The Kid. Originally, ‘Verändler’ was/is a set of waltzes and although the whistle holds that pattern you would have to be pretty nimble to dance to it. It would be nice to report that ‘Old Dog In The Distance’ is an old Irish tune but it’s another very nice original. Fireside is an intriguing blend of old and new, American and Celtic.
https://www.onthelashband.com/
The first taste of her upcoming album-songwriter When They All Looked Up, her first album of new non-Christmas material in six years, KATE RUSBY releases ‘Let Your Light Shine’ (Pure), a heartfelt uplifting message to her teenage daughters about embracing and having faith in who you are, being positive and kind and, indeed, letting your light shine. A slow swaying ballad with a suitably soaring melody and a lyric that mostly revolves around the title refrain, along with her band, handclaps, cornet and Ron Block on banjo, it also features the massed voices of the Barnsley Youth Choir’s Senior Choir.
www.katerusby.com
Fresh from the North, this new JOHN REED single – ‘The Sun’ – with over six minutes of simple lyrics, has a huge message to tell. Whoever listens to ‘The Sun’ will form their own mindful images when they hear these lyrics. A rather deep and evocative piece of writing, which gives the listener their own thoughts, of the message that ‘The Sun’ brings. The music that accompanies has its own, dramatic wave when delivered. Our leaders around the globe could take a lesson from this powerful song. John has a wonderful way of writing meaningful lyrics, and this track is of no exception.
These lyrics in the track – “The sun behind the clouds” to my mind reminds me of hope and that good things are around the corner.
John has this to say about the single: “Its lyrics are sparse and simple and deeply meant. Kindness costs nothing, and in this mad, mad world it should be virally distributed. Every life is precious”. Something we should all take on board and especially poignant in this currently scary world. It is up to us to make a good Sun come up and stop this world from spiralling down any further.
Released 21st March 2025 on Bandcamp.
https://www.johnreedmusic.com/
‘Yorkshire Belle’ was a pleasure cruiser plying her trade out of Bridlington until she was sunk by a stray mine in the Humber during WWII. It’s also the title of a new single by SKINNY LISTER who tell the story of how, like Stan Rogers’ ‘Mary Ellen Carter’, she rose again. Actually she was rebuilt from scratch in 1947 and is still going strong. Great story and a great song that we reckon will be in the band’s set for years to come.
https://skinnylister.com/
In a just world, JENNY COLQUITT would be a major international star, but the quest takes a step closer with her first new material since last year’s stunning Staring At The Moon album and her magnificent full band tour. ‘Hold Your Light Up’ is a mid-tempo anthemic piano ballad that builds to a synth strings-swathed climax, her powerful voice both soaring to the heavens and sounding softer, more intimate notes. Embodying themes of resilience and togetherness, it celebrates supporting each other and shining our light when the darkness threatens to engulf as she sings “please don’t leave me alone I’m feeling worthless/I’m running round ‘round in circles/And burning everything I own…I need you to love me/And hold me like I’m worthy today… I will keep this fight up/If you will hold your light up/And learn to never let me go”. She’s luminous. www.jennycolquitt.co.uk
It begins with a noise – it could be the sound of a stylus landing on a record, although that’s a bit retro. No, it’s probably the sound of feet moving through the woods. It introduces ‘Witch’, the atmospheric new single by ROSINA BUCK, a song that is more about the attitude to women who were clever, sexy or whatever made them stand out. Of course, she could be witch and was certainly treated as such.
https://www.rosinabuck.com/
The last single prelude to his new mostly traditional album, playing fingerpicked guitar and backed by double bass, JOE WILKES revives ‘Hard Times Of Old England’, a song dating back to the Napoleonic wars in the early eighteenth century and poverty of the time but with timeless resonances, especially today with Labour’s ‘not austerity’ that is dragging thousands of pensioners and the disabled into poverty, the video was shot in Tower Hamlets against the backdrop of Canary Wharf, its financial district home to over 3,500 bankers paid more than £850,000 while many locals are forced to resort to food banks.
www.joewilkes.bandcamp.com/track/hard-times-of-old-england
‘Can’t Even Cry’, the new single by BEN REEL, could be a song for a lost love or a lament for the current state of the USA. It pulls in every country trope – high wailing organ, harmonica, slide guitar and “I wish I was back on the road again”. Catchy and one for the playlist…or perhaps something more.
https://benreel.com
The sparsely strummed, cello-caressed title track of his upcoming third album, ‘Haul The Pots’ (self-released) has Irish singer-songwriter SÉAMUS ÓG exploring the struggle with mental health, and sectarianism (“the castle walls the blood stained flags well who am I to be pushed around, in the town the land where I belong”) in his hometown of Carrickfergus, finding quiet strength and solace in the sea as “the trapped voices in my mind/Wash away with the waves that gently lap”.
www.seamusog.co.uk
CHARLOTTE MORRIS from Philadelphia is looking back to and honouring the past with her new single, ‘Created Me’. Initially laid over acoustic guitar and subtle percussion with organ and strings coming in to build towards the ending, its essential message is that we are the product of our ancestry and should not lose sight of that.
https://www.charlottemorrismusic.com/
A staple of the live set in recent years, originally released as a driving folk rock number in 2015 as a Record Store Day EP, inspired by the effects of redundancy and unemployment in the traditional industries, particularly shipbuilding, Newcastle-based STEVE JINSKI has now re-recorded ‘Never Gonna Work Again’ accompanied by Andy May on piano as a moody ballad as the rise of AI sends human input “old before my time” to the scrap heap.
www.stevejinski.com
‘Granite Mills’ is the most recent of two new singles by ALISON KRAUSS & UNION STATION. It’s a traditional song concerning a fire at a cotton mill in Fall River City, Massachusetts in which three hundred people perished and it has all the power and drive for which the band is known. Taken from their upcoming album, Arcadia.
https://alisonkrauss.com/
Though credited to married couple VICKI PETERSON & JOHN COWSILL, while she features in the video the former Bangles guitarist doesn’t actually appear on the Orbisonesque ‘Is Anybody Here’ (51 Recordings). Instead, taken from Long After The Fire, their upcoming debut album of songs written by his late brothers Barry and Bill, her husband on soaring emotional vocals, the bass, percussion and chiming electric and acoustic guitars are played by Paul Allen, the song sounding like a musician’s lament playing to an empty room.
www.vickipetersonandjohncowsill.com
‘Leitrim Fields’, the new single by MICHELLE GAHAN, was inspired by memories of a childhood in rural Ireland. Kane O’Rourke adds to the atmosphere with low whistle and fiddle and producer Martin Quinn plays guitar and mandolin. Set in the post-war period it depicts a much simpler world and manages to be upbeat and reflective at the same time.
https://www.facebook.com/michellegahanmusic/
Not a Madness cover, the steady guitar strummed and banjo plucked ‘Our House’ is the new single from CHRISTINA ALDEN & ALEX PATTERSON, the second from their nearly completed new album Safe Travels. Their regular live show sway and singalong closer, the couple harmonising on the refrain, it’s about Christina growing up in a musical household in Norfolk. When Christina was a child, her mum would play folk music with her best friends on a Friday night in the kitchen (“Is it our house or yours, what time shall we meet? Are you bringing the kids, I haven’t played all week”), with the assorted offspring kids listening at the door and becoming devotees by osmosis. If mum played things like this, I’m not surprised.
www.christinaaldenandalexpatterson.com
From her album, Fragile Creatures, HANNAH ROSE PLATT releases ‘The Edinburgh Seven’ as a single. A wonderfully robust slice of folk-rock, it tells of seven women who studied medicine in the city in the 1860s but were prevented from graduating by…fill in the words for yourself, you know what it’s about. We’re looking forward to the album.
https://www.hannahroseplatt.com/
JON WILKS heralds his untitled fifth album, due in October, with ‘Could You Be The One’ which, marking a change from his usual traditional material, is a breezily fingerpicked and time signature shifting self-penned lyrically upbeat number featuring Jackie Oates on backing vocals and a studio reunion with bassist Richard Davies after 22 years.
https://jonwilks.online
The final single from her upcoming album, Scottish songstress OLIVIA RAFFERTY self-releases ‘Juan De Fuca’, a piano and strings pulsing number that, as it swells, tells the story of the 2001 Nisqually earthquake that shook the Pacific Northwest (“The cutlery shuddered, I crawled & I hid”), caused by the North American subducting tectonic plate called the Juan de Fuca, serving as a metaphor for how people can slowly slip away from us, the aftershocks felt long after they have gone (“I didn’t meet you at the grocery store/I haven’t seen you at the REM tour…It’s a sad kinda magic, to see you again/All this time it was a question of when/I never knew why oh I’ll never know how”).
www.oliviarafferty.com
‘Lost Like Me’ is the new single from THE BARKER BAND, a folk-rock outfit from London. It’s very smooth and professional sounding with big drums and an arrangement that sounds like the sea breaking over rocks. They don’t tell us much about themselves but this is very promising.
www.thebarkerband.com
To coincide with his 77th birthday, having grown up with old cars and bikes, Hawick singer-songwriter CHEERY ODIN (aka Loudon Temple music PR and booker for Brookfield Knights) releases ‘I Have To Tell You’, a jaunty blues shuffle reminiscent of Mungo Jerry that, joined my members of Cua, sings the praises on TV presenter Henry Cole (“a man with a passion and a dream/Saving old motor bikes and other machines…scrapyard gems neglected by a dumper”) and his team “fixin’’ and fettlin’ to make things gleam” on shows such as Junk & Disorderly and Shed and Buried. So, can we now have songs about The Antiques Road Show and Grand Designs, please.
www.cheeryodin.bandcamp.com
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