folk music
Liz Thomson
Among those making her Cambridge Folk Festival on the diminutive Club Stage back in the summer was Angeline Morrison, a Birmingham-born singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who these days makes her home in Cornwall, drawn at least in part by its folk music. Her short solo performance was noteworthy, and earlier this month it was announced that Morrison has been awarded the Christian Raphael Prize 2022, presented in association with the Festival. She is the fourth honouree, the roster including Katherine Priddy and Nick Hart.Last night, Morrison and her three excellent musicians ( Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
They've been away for a long time, not just due to that virus. Sisters Rachel and Becky have been busy with other projects including a score for Mackenzie Crook's Worzel Gummidge and works inspired by Emily Bronte and Molly Drake. So this album feels overdue. There are many who will revel in this delicious scoop of accessible and enjoyable folk. There is no fustiness here, no shanties or jigs. But the anticipated harmonies are as moving as ever – cutting through 2022's nonsense to deliver something achingly pure. Opener "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry" is an old song from Orkney Read more ...
joe.muggs
Beth Orton has never rushed her music. Her first four albums came one every three years, then since 2002 it’s averaged at a five year gap each time. So it’s no wonder also that there can be stylistic schisms from one to the next.In contrast to its rootsy, bluesy predecessors, her last record, 2016’s Kidsticks, was a clattery, electronic affair co-produced with Andrew Hung of synth noisemongers Fuck Buttons while living in LA. It felt like she was experimenting her way into a new sound that could evolve into a whole new phase of creativity.But, it turned out, the hyperactive energy of that Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The word “immersive” has, of late, been hijacked. Now used with conspicuous abandon by everyone from estate agents offering piss-poor 3-D renderings of bang average houses to fancy-dress film screenings, its true meaning has been immolated to the gods of mediocre marketing.Step forward Engineers multi-instrumentalist Mark Peters, whose new solo album, Red Sunset Dreams, does much to rebalance the scales and restore order for those who like their dives deep and their sound surround. The follow-up to 2018’s critically lauded Innerland, this new collection is a largely instrumental and wide Read more ...
Barney Harsent
“I can still taste you and I hate it/That wasn’t a choice in the mind of a child and you knew it/You took the first slice of me and you ate it raw/Ripped at it with your teeth and your lips like a cannibal/You fucking animal.” The opening lines of “Cannibal” the first track on Self-Titled, the solo debut from Marcus Mumford – are the first indication this might not be the album you’ve been expecting. Even if you’re already aware of the childhood abuse the singer suffered, and which inspired this collection songs, prior knowledge does little to prepare you for the visceral punch those Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Road movies in England work better by foot. Slowing down finds the scale to explore our small island, tramping Chaucer’s pilgrim paths, not Kerouac’s roaring highway.Visual artist Larry Achiampong’s debut feature accordingly sends its heroine from Hadrian’s Wall to Margate, during the already fantastical year when lockdowns left the landscape vacated. Wearing priestly red robes akin to Red Riding Hood penetrating the forest or an Atwood Handmaid, the Wanderer (Perside Rodrigues) is an sci-fi tourist, exploring a post-imperial country through a post-colonised immigrant lens.Wayfinder is Read more ...
Liz Thomson
A decade or so ago, I imagine if I’d run in to Fisherman’s Friends while enjoying a beer and a nice fat crab sandwich in a Port Isaac pub I’d have passed a happy evening and possibly returned the next night.Sea shanties – indeed, any good close-harmony singing – is very appealing, our reaction to it physiological, an endorphin boost. The sound is irresistible, no matter if you’re drunk or sober. A great part of Fisherman’s Friends' appeal would be their authenticity – a bunch of nice guys with decent voices getting together to have fun and make music.A decade or so of marketing has Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Celebrating, if that is the right word, his 75th year, Loudon Wainwright III offers us his 26th studio album in 52 rollicking years, Lifetime Achievement. Though he does have one Grammy on the shelf, for 2009’s double set, Charlie Pool Project, awards made from polished metals have not littered his life path or career trajectory. Captivating songs packed with home truths, razor-sharp wit and hilarious asides, however, do litter that career, along with a family crisis or two, and Lifetime Achievement has more than enough to satisfy all long-term fans, as well as drawing in new ones who may Read more ...
Liz Thomson
On the last weekend of July, as they have every year since 1965, when an enlightened city council decided that Cambridge – like Newport, Rhode Island – would have a folk festival, thousands of people trekked to Cherry Hinton to enjoy what is now Britain’s premier folk event. One of the biggest in Europe and celebrated throughout the world, Cambridge is a calendar fixture and its return after the inevitable Covid absence was clearly very welcome.Some 1,400 people came to that first festival, which featured the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Shirley Collins, Bob Davenport, Peggy Seeger, Hedy Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Violinist and composer Ruby Colley combines elements of folk, contemporary classical and jazz with explorations and evocations of the natural world.Her debut release, 2010’s Murmurations, was a minimalist, paired-down evocation of nature and natural forms, and since then, she has written music for films, collaborated on a range of theatre and dance projects, and played with the likes of Sinead O’Connor, The Unthanks and Cosmo Sheldrake.Some of the music from Overheard, her first album in 12 years, stems from collaborations with the arts-and-tech AltPitch festival, and a film of the album’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kathryn Williams’ creativity leaves most singers standing. She’s always up to something and it’s usually interesting. As well as multiple albums over two decades, including one themed around Sylvia Plath and another created with the poet Carol Anne Duffy, last year she had her first novel published, the ominous island-set tale, The Ormering Tides. She’s done loads else too, her work often loosely in the folk form, heavily seasoned with the hurts of loving and living. Her latest contains much of the latter, but its production is more opulent, electronic and experimental than her usual Read more ...
joe.muggs
James Bay couldn’t be more unhip if he had pelvic removal surgery. He is so middle of the road that he could be a cat’s eye. Everything about him is old before his time – he was inspired to pick up a guitar by hearing “Layla”, he sings in a husky transatlantic semi-Celtic voice, he exists in a continuum of soft rock that runs from the start of AOR through U2, David Gray and the Coldplay imitation explosion of the 00s through to Ed Sheeran and Louis Capaldi.And he is also very, very, very good at doing what he does indeed. This album makes no bones about his positioning. The opener “ Read more ...