One third of Harp & A Monkey, SIMON JONES takes inspiration from the world of British TV and film horror, such as Hammer House of Horror, Tales of The Unexpected, Children Of The Stones and, of course, The Wicker Man (and its soundtrack by Paul Giovanni and Magnet), for Lust, Desire & Blood (self-released). An entirely solo production, the narratives for the four tracks are based on pagan chants woven together with original lyrics to create dark narratives of the body and earth. It opens with the snake charmer rhythmic drone of twisted love song ‘If A Tree Grew From Me’ (“If you ever found yourself a better girl than I/It’d send me to an early grave and it’s where I’d rather be/And if a tree did grow from me with branches tall and strong/I’d hope one day you’d hang yourself from me…And if some fruit did grow from me so sweet and so delight/I’d hope you’d take a bite and choke on me”). moving into the percussive, urgent ‘We Are A Circle’ with its repeated chant-like refrain (“We are a circle within a circle/With no beginning and never ends”) and a call to “Take our fear, take our pain/Take the darkness into the Earth again”.
With plinketty and wheezing keyboards accompaniment and double tracked vocals, ‘Merrily Bring The Harvest In’ is built around lines from the anonymous pagan poem ‘Harvest Song’, a Lammas food blessing (“We’ve ploughed, we’ve sowed/We’ve reaped, we’ve mowed/The boughs do shake and bells do ring/So merrily comes our harvest in”) and sometimes found as a children’s singalong. Ending with the droning and static crackling title track instrumental, it’s a brief but hypnotic affair that comes in a card sleeve and a hand-made tag with gold leaf, a hand-printed symbol, and a random metal charm.
www.simonjohnjones.bandcamp.com
LA singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist CHRIS MURPHY released a new EP, The Red Road, earlier this month. He writes serious songs with a twist of humour which makes this set very entertaining and his musical style is unique. The songs are built on foot percussion or perhaps a kick-drum and a fiddle that starts out as an old-timey scratch but veers towards blues and jazz here and there. The first track, ‘Never Learned To Drive’, released as a single, is dedicated to that most maligned of American minorities, the pedestrian, so straight away you know where he’s coming from.
‘Worn Thin’ is about a man whose patience has been…by city traffic, his ex-girlfriend, Hell, just life in general – we all know what that’s like. Then there’s a real chugging country vibe to ‘The Red Road’, another clever song laced with humour. It sounds as though Chris tried to work every “hitting the road” cliché he could think of into the track but it works and you really don’t notice what he’s up to. The best song is probably ‘The Complete Works Of Edgar Allen Poe’ which is about a departed girlfriend in which every simile – well, you’ve guessed it, haven’t you? Finally, ‘Tara McKinley’ is about another girl who could have been significant had they actually got together. The Red Road is an absolute knockout.
https://chrismurphymusic.com/
LIZZY HARDINGHAM follows up her mental-health themed album, How Did We Get Here, with The Leaving, a folksy four-track EP about love and loss with three originals and classic folk cover. Featuring Katriona Gilmore on mandolin and fiddle and double bass by Jonny Wickham, it kicks off, voice soaring, with the gently swaying ‘Hollow’, a love song to tribute to an unnamed musician, who has passed and the emptiness felt (“In your song tangible troubles are left far behind/And how I wish we could see the world the way that it shone in your mind/You saw the very best that this world has to give/I feel hollow/Like my blood and my bones and my heart have all gone with you/More than sorrow/To be saying goodbye to a star of your magnitude”). Chords tumbling, mandolin to the fore, ‘Still Hurting’ is a song about breaking-up with a lover (“My bed feels cold without you in it/My heart feels lost without you there to win it/I thought I knew what I was doing/And I was so sure until the minute it was over”) and the mixed emotions (“I’m happy that you’re moving on but I’m still hurting …Now I think I must be heartless
To have such comfort and to end it irregardless…And I’ve only got myself to blame that I’m still hurting”). The last original, another about a lost relationship (“we were just like ships in the night/Without a light”), is the fiddle-adorned ‘Receipt’, touching on how simple bits of paper can hold the stories of our lives (“There’s a receipt in a pocket of a coat I haven’t worn for a while/For a tenner’s worth of train ride to take me back from your house to mine…And on that lonely journey I think of all the things we could have done”). The cover closes proceedings in fine fettle with a slow, ruminative and ache-infused take on ‘Leaving Of Liverpool’, a reminder that she’s as fine an interpreter of songs as she is a writer of her own.
www.lizzyhardingham.com
In advance of their new album later this year, SKINNY LISTER release a live EP, Pub Shed Bootleg, with six tracks taken from their recent Shanty Punk. Recorded at the Forge And Flagon shed in Leicestershire – you have to be in the know to find it – with a necessarily small but enthusiastic audience.
They kick off with ‘Company Of The Bar’, the video for which was filmed in this very venue. They sound like a seagoing Pogues and ‘Arm Wrestling In Dresden’ is even more Pogueish with thumping drums and accordion backing. They’re not just ranters, though, as Lorna Thomas demonstrates on the country-styled ‘Mantra’- “Recognise what you have while you have it”. Joni Mitchell said something similar.
‘William Harker’ and ‘Pittsburgh Punch Up’ bring back the good-time vibes but, while it doesn’t lack energy, ’13 Miles’ tells a serious story and tells it well to close the set. All good stuff.
https://skinnylister.com/
Strangers is the debut EP by MERCY CLUB, a six-piece band from Colorado. The record is not very long, perhaps not long enough, but it certainly whets the appetite for future developments. The opening track, ‘I Slept Through The War’ is lyrically complex: about a mother whose son has been conscripted and musically rich as are all their tracks. ‘(Devil) Wasting Your Time’ is a big, louche, bluesy slice of Americana built on keyboards and decorated with mandolin while the title track is a very short, harmonised meditation on anxiety and the potential for disaster. Probably. Mercy Club haven’t said much about themselves yet but no doubt facts will emerge in the fullness of time.
https://www.facebook.com/mercyclubmusic
Storm Chaser And Other Stories is the new EP by NOW VOYAGERS – five original tracks and one traditional song. Now Voyagers is the nom de plume of singer/songwriter/composer Kim Green from Bath. His style is based on open guitar tunings following the lead of Jansch, Renbourn and Graham to which he adds a number of talented instrumentalists notably, on this record, Jon Shurlock on small pipes.
‘Storm Chaser’ should, to judge from its title, be full of danger and adventure but, despite references to “darkening skies” and “spiral galaxies”, it seems that the storms may be of a more philosophical nature. Lovely flute, too. The next two tracks form a matched pair. ‘Trespass’ is partly philosophical, too, but it seems to hark back to ‘Kinder Scout, April 24th 1932’, the famous mass trespass, represented here by a dramatic instrumental.
‘Lorelie’ is a pastoral piece laden with strings addressed to a child while looking forward to his future while ‘The Art Lovers’ brings the guitar back to the forefront in a song that has an innocent double meaning. Finally, the traditional ‘John Riley’ is a classic broken token ballad – which in this version doesn’t mention a token of any description. Jon Wilkes, in his blog, shares our opinion that the next verse should feature her giving him a good hand-bagging!
https://nowvoyagers.bandcamp.com/album/storm-chaser-and-other-stories
RAVENHYMN are a neo-mediaeval band blending flute, bagpipes and drum with guitar and vocals by all five members of the band – and goth and metal influences. I Saw The Wolf is a four track EP opening with the pounding drums of the title track. After a couple of verses the pipes come in followed by the vocals again but this time sung in Occitan.
Next comes ‘Ievan Pollka’, a traditional Finnish polska with an intro pinched from a heavy metal band. You could dance to it but you’d need to be very fit indeed. ‘Wassail (Shudrinka)’ is a traditional Macedonian tune mixed with the band’s own lyrics based on the English celebration calling for the return of summer. Finally ‘Totus Floreo’ is a selection of Latin poems taken from Carmina Burana, but still given the Ravenhymn beat.
If you think that mediaeval music should be slow and solemn. Ravenhymn may make you think again.
https://www.facebook.com/Ravenhymnmusic/
There is a delicious low rumble introducing ‘Beyond The Blue’, the opening track of How Many Times, the new EP by JACK LAW and RICKY ROMAIN recorded in an on-line collaboration. Then come stringsand the sound of an etherial tanpura accompanying a song about love and friendship and security – you would best describe it as haunting.
The title track is built on another of Ricky’s sonic landscapes – percussion, more synths (possibly) and echoey sitar. The question expands on Bob Dylan’s enquiries in ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ – the ones about white doves and cannonballs. We are saddened but not surprised that the question is still being asked today.
‘Whisper The Wind’ also has an oriental feel with more sweeping strings playing the titular wind and, according to Jack, it was inspired by The Pilgrim’s Progress and is as much about dreams and choices -Robert Frost gets a look in. How Many Times is a thoughtful set with experimental sounds grabbing the attention.
https://www.facebook.com/p/Jack-Law-100064003142152/
From Forres, encouraged by an online songwriting course tutored by Boo Hewerdine and Findlay Napier and teaching herself to play tenor guitar, ukulele and shruti box, SHIRLEY BARR is, like fellow Scot, Norman Paterson another late bloomer. Following on from last year’s ‘The Hardest Hand’, a song about her relationship with her father and how he made such difficult life choices, that was part of the STAGES songwriting course compilation, she now releases the first of six singles that will form her debut EP, Begin Began Begun. Featuring her on shruti, Jamie MacReae on harmonium and handclap percussion, ‘The Rope’ is her setting of a poem Colin Macduff that, taking the rope as a metaphor, muses on the passing years (“Left aside beside the new, unwanted/You dream of hands, the touch, their grip, their shape …Once you were the rope that held us steady/Once you were the rope that cast us free…The tug of war when we were in our teens/The give, the take, that bound us all together…Lifeline, last line, frayed and poorly/In my hand your strands so soft, soft and slack”). Late to the party perhaps, but a very welcome guest.
www.shirleybarrmusic.com
Something of an epic, ‘The Leap’, the new self-released single by Irish traditional outfit RĒALTA clocks in at around 15 minutes. Commissioned by the charity Live Music Now and composed by founding members Conor Lamb and Deirdre Galway, it celebrates the townland and people of Limavady, Co. Derry, describing the area’s landscape and exploring the story behind the town’s name (Léim an Mhadaidh – ‘The Dog’s Leap’) – from the Norman invasion of Ó Catháin’s castle, to the journey of the clan’s faithful hound who leapt over the Roe Valley in search of reinforcements to defend their homeplace. Combining spoken word poetry by Garvagh poet Anne McMaster with visual art by Sligo artist Peter Crann for a music video on which a 12m-long scroll of illustrated paper was filmed as it was hand-wound within a Crankie box, moving from ‘The Leap’ through ‘March On The River’ and ‘The Running Dog’ with its airy pipes, whistles and guitars and shifting tempos, it’s a lyrically and musically captivating work.
www.realtamusic.com
This is something different. IONA FYFE has released a Scots language version of Taylor Swift’s ‘Love Story’ as a single. This isn’t Gaelic but the language that Dick Gaughan described to an audience as not English although it includes some words you know. Sample verse “Sae I sneak oot tae e gairden tae see yi/We keep quay-et, ’cause wir deid if they kent/Sae close yer eyes/Escape this toon fir a little file, oh oh”. Iona’s version is based around piano with her high, clear voice skating across the music.
https://ionafyfe.com/
From Birmingham but currently seeking fame and fortune in London, LILY CLARKE makes her debut with the self-released ‘The City’, an essentially simple but structurally complex number with strummed acoustic guitar backdropped by sound samples (train, seagulls), muted drums and what sounds like woodwinds that speaks of insecurity (“I wanna be someone else most days”), lack of a sense of purpose and the need for someone to lean on (“when I feel like nothing you’re the stableness I know”). It’s already picked up several very positive online reviews, so definitely a name to keep an eye on.
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082586691322
SAM CARTER releases a single, ‘Good Enough’, taken from his forthcoming album, Silver Horizon. The song is a philosophical slice of folk-rock which, at the very least, deserves to be a radio hit. They may not have much money and life will be a gamble but as far as Sam is concerned if they’re together that will be good enough for him.
www.samcartermusic.co.uk
Evocative of Nanci Griffith and Eva Cassidy, eight months on from her comeback EP, Liverpool’s KATIE NICHOLAS has her first release of 2024 with the fingerpicked, strings-swathed Americana of ‘The Wheel’ (Ladybird Records), a song about a never-ending cycle of two lovers who can’t make it work, no matter how hard they try.
www.katienicholas.co.uk
‘Lenticular Cloud’ is a new single by London-based AVID BEATS, otherwise known as Sam, in partnership with US singer/songwriter CECE ALANIZ. It’s a rich, complex song with Cece taking the lead vocals while Sam handles what would seem to be a dazzling array of instruments – a bit on the fringes of folk, though.
https://www.avidbeats.com/
RAGGED AMBER are Maurice and Leah McGrath, a Dublin father and daughter duo who specialise in historically based folk songs with an Irish connection. Their debut release is ‘On The Field At Waterloo’, a melancholic fingerpicked acoustic Napoleonic wars ballad about a young woman receiving the news that her lover has been killed in battle, drawing on the fact that, motivated by the idea of a regular wage, many Irishmen joined up to fight for the British.
www.raggedamber.com
Where to start? HUSK is a trans musician who performs in both English and Irish. Their new single, ‘Open Waters’ is sung in English and although they emphasise the electronica element in their music it’s not overdone. The percussion sounds electronic but the fiddle is real and the flute could be either. Multi-tracked vocals make for a rich sound – it’s rather good.
https://www.facebook.com/husknoise
‘Sweet Love’ is a gently funky song written by MATT McGINN in partnership with Irish legend Paul Brady. It’s the love song of a man plagued with self-doubt who desperately wants to accept the love that’s on offer.
https://www.mattmcginnmusic.com/
Paul Cowley hails from Birmingham (the UK one), and lives in Brittany, though we see him quite often in Britain. While much of his music is rooted in country blues – which he does very well indeed – he’s never been afraid to go well beyond the constraints of the magic 12 bars, as he does with his new single ‘Time!’, to be released digitally on July 31st. The lyric contemplates the passing of time and how our perceptions change as we grow older, which might sound gloomy, but really isn’t. “Time keeps moving, got to grab it while you can…”
Structurally simple, the song has a slow intro morphing into a lively shuffle beat, the whole production having an engaging spontaneity. Paul’s multi-tracked guitars and Americana-tinged vocals are augmented by classy unison and harmony vocalising by Anne-Lise Bourgeois. I don’t know if they intend to record together again, but if they do, I want to hear it!
By the time you read this, there should be a video available.
Artist’s website: https://www.paulcowleymusic.com/time-single/
As a taster for his new album, Lessons, DAVID LUNING releases the title track as a single. The song is a mighty slab of Americana with all the trimmings: “Life lessons, you gotta learn ‘em for yourself” is the take-home message. He’s not wrong and in telling us so he packs a real punch.
https://www.davidluning.com/
Thanks for stopping by. Please help us continue and support us by tipping/donating to folking.com via
You must be logged in to post a comment.