folk music
Katie Colombus
First Aid Kit have grown up and moved on. So says the cheerful conglomeration of lockdown-emergent pop sounds that makes up their fifth studio album.The record has the movement of a road trip around the USA with kitschy Americana, echoes of Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty, folk and acoustic country. It makes you feel as though you’re driving down open highways under warm starry skies with the roof down. But Palomino is actually the first album Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg have recorded in Sweden since their debut, The Big Black & The Blue 12 years ago.Written during the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Much of Amateurs is observational. “Folk Festival” ponders appearing at said event: is the place on the bill right; would fitting in be easier if the lyric’s subject were a different age? During “Market on the Sand”, it’s wondered while browsing whether there is “something here that is meant just for me”.Amateurs, by Australia’s Laura Jean Englert, feels as if it’s the result of a period of contemplation. The album begins with “Teenage Again”, an acoustic guitar-driven mid-tempo folk-rocker with a Neil Young feel. “When I was 17, my mama couldn’t handle me” are the opening lyrics. Approaching Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The British folk horror wave of the late Sixties and early Seventies wasn’t impervious to American influence. Though Roddy McDowall (1928-98), the director of The Ballad of Tam-Lin (1970), was born in Herne Hill, he was as Hollywood-steeped as its London-based star Ava Gardner.McDowall is best-known as a prolific actor (How Green Was My Valley, The Planet of the Apes films) and photographer than for his only foray into filmmaking. He can't be faulted for dynamism and sensitivity, even if some of the inexperienced actors needed more guidance.The medieval Scottish Border romance Tam Lin (Child Read more ...
Tim Cumming
It’s the second night of a four-night run at the London Palladium of the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Tour – no other Dylan jaunt has taken an album for its title – and it begins with a blast of symphonic violence from the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. The house lights fade to black, the symphony segues into a modal tune-up on stage, Dylan and his four-piece – second guitarist Bob Britt is not here tonight – barely visible in silhouette.And then it begins in a flurry of piano keys and guitar, the stage becoming eerily lit from below, and Dylan leans in to a song from the early 1970s, “ Read more ...
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 ...