On Tuesday 4th March the Official Charts Company, produced by English Folk Expo, revealed the Top 40 best-selling and most streamed folk albums released in the February reporting period in the UK by UK and Irish artists. The chart is first announced to the public on Tuesday 4th March at 7pm GMT as part of the Official Folk Albums Chart Show presented by Folk on Foot via their YouTube channel.
There are nine new releases and a new No. 1 in the February chart!
Rich(ard) Dawson’s End of the Middle (Weird World) takes the No.1 spot this month. While Dawson is no stranger to big musical ideas, be it opening his 2022 album The Ruby Cord with a world-building 41-minute track or writing epic songs from the perspective of a seed with the Finnish experimental rock band Circle, here he strips things back to their bare-bones essence, revealing a remarkably poised, oddly elegant collection of songs.
Looking For The Thread (Thirty Tigers/Lambent Light), the first collaborative album from Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart, comes in at No.3. Conceived in the remote west of Scotland and recorded at the renowned Real World Studios, this unique album supports and illuminates the core characteristics of each artist while bringing forth a powerful collective identity.
Landing at No.6 is The Granite Way (Honor Oak) by acclaimed folk musician Seth Lakeman. Recorded alongside a group of longtime collaborators, the album finds Lakeman staying true to his roots and referring to ancient stories that inspired early West Country storytelling. As he explains, “Each song feels strongly connected through history to the moors and the sea.”
New at No. 7 is Anna B Savage’s You & I Are Earth (City Slang). Her first record following a move to Donegal, Ireland, the album serves as both a love letter to the country, romantic gesture for a partner and rumination on relocation. Featuring contributions from members of beloved Irish projects Lankum and Crash Ensemble, the record is an inward-gazing ode to a time and place marked by history, beauty and complication.
Over two decades since the band’s genre-blurring ‘pagan folktronica’ first emerged from an east London studio courtesy, Tunng return with their eighth album Love You All Over Again (Full Time Hobby), entering at No.9. The record once more finds the band sieving acoustic guitars and poetic disquisitions on nature, mythology and the human condition through a lattice of fractured beats and crackling electronics.
Known as one half of alt-folk sensation India Electric Co. and for playing on tour with legendary musician Midge Ure, Cole Stacey’s debut solo album Postcards From Lost Places (Shoelay Music) lands at No. 20. Taking listeners on a journey from a regenerated Clay Factory in the heart of Devon through a prehistoric settlement on Dartmoor and a Victorian mining village, Stacey weaves timeless melodies and evocative tunes along the way.
Elsewhere in the chart, Welsh folk singer, researcher and cultural historian Owen Shiers, aka Cynefin, comes in at No. 23 with Shimli (Recordiadau Smotyn D); Donegal (Compass) by Altan is at No. 32; and As The Chaos Unfolds (Rhona Macfarlane) by Scottish singer-songwriter closes out the new entries at No. 38
The full Top 40 list can be viewed HERE
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