folk music
Peter Culshaw
Pete Seeger has had a vast number of tributes since he died aged 94 on Monday. That might seem surprising for an artist whose real heyday was over 50 years ago. Part of the reason no doubt was the dignified and steadfast aura of a man of the people and heartfelt activist. Along with his friend Woody Guthrie, he ushered in a period in American music when after the initial flush of rock'n'roll had subsided it became interesting to sing pop songs that were not mere romantic slush, but often had a political message. His mission was also to re-imagine the folk music of the steppes of America. Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Inside Llewyn Davis, Joel and Ethan Coen's brooding homage to the Greenwich Village folk scene, is set in 1961 (January probably), just before Bob Dylan's revelatory songs popularised it. The film is named for its protagonist, a working-class singer-guitarist suggested by the seminal Village folk-blues performer and musicians' mentor Dave Von Ronk. The undomiciled Llewyn also inherited Phil Ochs's habit of crashing on other performers' couches.Portrayed with consummate weary restraint by Oscar Isaac, Llewyn is not a prepossessing movie hero. Selfish and self-destructive, capable of being Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It was almost a decade ago, when that Mercury-winning Antony and the Johnsons album was everywhere, that I learned that there was no such thing as critical consensus. The writers who raved about the album were correct in that Antony Hegarty’s voice gave me chills, but they were the chills of a morning shower with a boiler malfunction rather than of rapture. Post Tropical, the second album from James Vincent McMorrow has received similar reviews and performs in what, from the opening bars of single “Cavalier”, could almost be the same voice. But as the song, and the album, starts softly to Read more ...
peter.quinn
Musically, lyrically, dramatically, on every count this debut album from The Gloaming is exceptional. Four-fifths of the group - Clare fiddle player Martin Hayes, Chicago guitarist Dennis Cahill, the Cúil Aodha sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionaird and Dublin-born hardanger player Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh - are all well-known figures within traditional Irish music. It's The Gloaming's fifth member, New York-based pianist (and album producer) Thomas Bartlett, whose harmonic, rhythmic and textural effects serve to paint this music on a wider, more expansive canvas.Bringing together a song and six Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Jackson C. Frank: Jackson C. Frank“I am afraid of the ocean as much as the possibility it is my mother,” declared Jackson C. Frank in the liner notes to his sole, eponymous album, issued in September 1965. “Songs that I write aren’t mine to admit to,” he went on. “They dwell a little too heavily on the grey area behind my eyes to become my friends.” Presciently, he admitted “you’ll never know me as I do until it’s impossible twilight too late to do anything about it.” This was a singer unafraid to reveal the content of his psyche. He was not pop's usual contender. The album Read more ...
David Nice
May this be a New Year sign and a symbol of a revitalized concert scene to come: an eclectic programme of dazzling range to draw in the new pick-and-mix generation, full of segues that worked and executed with the right balance of poetry and in-your-face exuberance by a crack team of young players. The Aurora Orchestra’s American “Road Trip” nearly drove into a ditch with Kentucky singer-songwriter Dawn Landes on board, but even one or two of her numbers were fascinating and in any case the purely instrumental sequences were rich enough to make up a concert in themselves.So let’s get the dips Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Chisholm was born and raised in Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, and was tutored by great fiddler player, composer and instrument maker Donald Riddell. He's a regular player with Julie Fowlis and with his own band Wolfstone, and this is a live recording of his epic Strathglass Trilogy. Originally released on the Copperfish label, the trilogy was six years in the making, and features the award-winning Farrar (2008), Canaich (2010) and Affric (2012). The trilogy - and this live set - is a musical representation of the ancient Chisholm Clan lands north-west of Loch Ness. It’s one of the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's a happy coincidence that John Fullbright hails from Woody Guthrie's home town of Okemah, Oklahoma, but his debut album presents an artist who is far from being a mere clone of the fabled balladeer. A spin through the dozen tracks on From the Ground Up reveals traces of blues, country, gospel, folk and rock, all handled with rough-hewn earthiness. But while Fullbright has a traditionalist's respect for old-fashioned stuff that works ("old country and bluegrass is my bread and butter," as he puts it), it's his gift for imagery and storytelling that makes his songwriting special.Reared on Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s now twenty five years since the release of the Waterboys’ most popular album, Fisherman’s Blues. To mark this auspicious occasion, Mike Scott has persuaded EMI to release a six-CD expanded version, Fisherman’s Box, which has 120-odd tracks of the type of music that, let’s not forget, did not receive universal acclaim in 1988 but has significantly grown in stature since then. He’s also called in the guys who recorded these folk, gospel, country and bluegrass flavoured tunes and has hit the road for a proper celebration of their “raggle-taggle gypsy” years.The Birmingham leg of the tour Read more ...
fisun.guner
I can’t say I ever tune into More4, so I confess that I don’t know whether its arts strand is any good, or even if it has one. But I suspect that Get Folked might have made a better three-parter on BBC Four, and not just for dedicated folk-heads. As it was, it tried to pack a lot into its 50 minutes (though allowing only 10 seconds for Mumford and Sons might be seen as a blessing by some) and it did so with a lot of seasoned hyperbole. According to the voice-over in Sam Bridger’s mish-mash of a film, “Something unbelievable has been unfolding over the last few years,” and that something is Read more ...
paul.mcgee
There's been a quiet but nevertheless palpable sense of anticipation surrounding psych-folk enigma Linda Perhacs' first-ever European tour. Comparatively low-key advance publicity certainly proved no impediment to a sold-out house for the recent opening date at Berlin's Kantine am Berghain, a somewhat drab and unprepossessing bunker in the shadow of the city's notorious techno temple.The late bloomer/Indian summer narrative has become ever more familiar to music fans in recent years. Vashti Bunyan and Terry Callier were both rescued from obscurity via a combination of serendipity and a devout Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Setting bankers, Baroness Thatcher, tax-dodging multinationals and Woody Guthrie to music? These days, it could only be a Billy Bragg gig. Reports of Bragg losing his political teeth, based on slightly guarded reviews of his latest album, Tooth & Nail, are on the evidence of last night greatly exaggerated. This is a songwriter who could no more detach his ideology than his right arm, and still play his guitar. He combined new songs and old favourites in equal measure. Many pieces used a pedal steel guitar, adding a delicious rustic wail. Bragg pre-empted criticism of the technical Read more ...