folk music
Tim Cumming
Ten years ago, three leading young English folk musicians got together in a room and swapped some tunes – Rob Harbron, whose English concertina graced the likes of The Remnant Kings and Emily Portman’s albums; melodeon player Andy Cutting, a three-times winner of Radio 2’s Folk Musician of the Year; and former Bellowhead alumni and fellow Musician of the Year, fiddler Sam Sweeney.Together, they chose the name Leveret, a term for a young hare, and went on to record a set of ancient English tunes, including an epic, drone-tastic take of “The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance”, and went on to revive an Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This double album takes Van Morrison back to one of his early muses – Skiffle and its repertoire, that precursor to the rock'n'roll years that took hold of Britain in the 1950s, having percolated across the USA through the first half of the century, combining folk, blues, country, bluegrass and jazz into one steaming head of home-brewed folk, hopped up on washboards, jugs, washtub bass and the like.It was arguably the first flame of the fire that consumed the music world of the 1960s as Skiffle-addicted teens like Van grew into leaders of the Sixties beat boom and the subsequent invasion of Read more ...
India Lewis
Eliza Carthy has been busy, as she always has. Recording various albums with various artists during the pandemic, her show with her band, The Restitution (and many others), at the Barbican on Saturday, was well stuffed with music, musicians, laughter, familial connections and celebrations. Arguably the reigning queen of folk in England, Eliza has inspired a generation (including a friend of mine whose imaginary friend she was), simultaneously reinventing the form and honouring her roots, the melodies and lyrics brought once more to life. This concert was an excellent way of showing this Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s the sound of the sun. Panda Bear – born Noah Lennox – is singing in a voice with the purity and warmth of Brian Wilson. Beside him, Sonic Boom – Pete Kember – has more of a growl, a timbre which might make announcements in a railway station. The contrast works well. Sweet and slightly sour.And, in another way, it is the sound of the sun. Kember and Lennox both live in balmy Portugal and here they are in Aalborg, at the top end of Denmark at the Northern Winter Beat festival. It’s freezing out, with the Jutland wind coming off the Limfjord a few streets away bringing it down to a level Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Lisa O’Neill is a part of the new wave of Irish contemporary folk artists, one that encompasses the likes of Lankum, Ye Vagabonds and John Francis Flynn, all of them putting their albums out on Rough Trade, which makes the venerable English Indie label something of a centre for what the present and future of Irish folk music sounds like. (Lankum’s Radie Peat and O’Neill have also sung together, on the excellent “Factory Girl”, part of the showcase This Ain’t No Disco.)All of This Is Chance is O’Neill’s first release through Rough Trade, and her fourth album since the self-released Has An Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
In full force again for 2023, Scotland’s premier folk music festival Celtic Connections is back with its signature strand of blending and sharing musical traditions. On Saturday, emerging Scottish folk cellist Juliette Lemoine gave a superb early evening recital in Glasgow City Hall’s intimate recital room for what was the official launch of her debut album Soaring.Her band comprised pianist Fergus McCreadie – who was recently nominated for the Mercury Music Prize with his jazz album Forest Floor – saxophonist Matt Carmichael and award-winning fiddler and jazz bassist Charlie Stewart on Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The 1997 release of Time Out of Mind was the resurrection of an artist who appeared to have wandered off the reservation some years before, lost in transit on his Never Ending Tour, trailed by an army of "Bobcats" who followed him for show after grinding show. “How can you stand it?” he once asked of a woman who told him she’d seen dozens of NET gigs.While set lists shifted like tidal sands from night to night, the performances ranged from the ragged and wildly unfamiliar to the singular and revelatory. After attending one of 1991’s woeful run of shows at Hammersmith Odeon during a bitter Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Carvings is recorded so it sounds as if Juni Habel is adjacent to the listener’s ear. The Norwegian singer-songwriter may as well be inches away. Such intimacy can be disconcerting, especially as Carvings evokes a reflective melancholy. Its eight crepuscular songs evoke twilight and wintertime, when introspection is never far.Habel’s second album is the follow-up to summer 2021’s All Ears. That was a mood piece drawing from influences including Vashti Bunyan and Jessica Pratt. Carvings is less about the atmosphere created but more about the form of the song itself, and rising and falling Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Some of what’s nourishing the debut album by Sweden’s Dina Ögon is evident. A Bossa Nova jazz-pop essence evokes Brazil’s Quarteto em Cy. There’s a trip-hop undertow. Vocal lines bring to mind Free Design. Less easy to pinpoint is a melodic sensibility which seems to be derived from local traditions; echoing the sort of fusion pioneered by Jan Johansson’s Jazz på svenska and Merit Hemmingson when she reframed folk music on the Svensk folkmusik på beat albums.It’s likely Dina Ögon – the name translates as “your eyes” – are mindful of all or some of this, but what they’ve come up with doesn’t Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beatles loomed over everything else. It wasn’t inevitable, but the arrival of the revealing Revolver box set and Peter Jackson’s compelling Get Back film confirmed that there is more to say about what’s known, and also that there are new things to say about popular music’s most inspirational phenomenon of the 20th century.Just as it was when The Beatles were operational, the Revolver box and Get Back gave other things out there standards to aspire to. This pair of archive releases became a wholly unexpected yardstick for 2022. Obviously though, brows at labels aren’t furrowing about Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the final theartsdesk on Vinyl of 2022 which is topped off by two Vinyl of the Months, one there for seasonal jollies and the other for musical adventurousness. As ever, the rest runs the gamut from reissues of albums from decades ago to the most contemporary, cutting edge music around. Dive in!CHRISTMAS VINYL OF THE MONTHVarious The Muppet Christmas Carol (Walt Disney)Is there a more Christmassy object than a picture disc of the soundtrack to The Muppet Christmas Carol? There may be but this will do us very well. Coincidentally, theartsdesk on Vinyl’s festive film-show this year Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Growing up in Sweden, sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg developed ways of combatting the biting cold and bleak darkness of winter. As well as writing during wintertime, they turned to the open landscapes and pervasive desert heat of the USA to inspire their music. Perhaps it is this that brings such a warm sheen to their presence.On a stage ablaze with the iridescent shimmer of a huge sun backdrop, the duo open with “Palomino”, to a retro film screen of horses running free and wild. The Nevada aesthetic continues with “Angel” and “It’s A Shame” accompanied by Super 8-style films of golden Read more ...