folk music
Oslo World review - a dizzying selection of high-tech, grassroots global brillianceWednesday, 09 November 2022
The Oslo World organisers are at pains to point out that, despite the name, they are not a “world music” festival. And with good reason, really. There may have been a few familiar WOMAD veterans headlining over the week-long event – Senegal’s... Read more... |
Album: First Aid Kit - PalominoFriday, 04 November 2022
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... Read more... |
Album: Laura Jean - AmateursThursday, 03 November 2022
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... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Ballad of Tam-LinFriday, 28 October 2022
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... Read more... |
Bob Dylan, London Palladium - busy painting his masterpieceSaturday, 22 October 2022
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’... Read more... |
Angeline Morrison, Cecil Sharp House - a ballad-maker for our timeFriday, 21 October 2022
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... Read more... |
Album: The Unthanks - Sorrows AwayWednesday, 12 October 2022
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... Read more... |
Album: Beth Orton - Weather AliveFriday, 23 September 2022
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... Read more... |
Album: Mark Peters - Red Sunset DreamsWednesday, 21 September 2022
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... Read more... |
Album: Marcus Mumford - (Self-Titled)Friday, 16 September 2022
“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... Read more... |
DVD: WayfinderSunday, 28 August 2022
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... Read more... |
Album: Fisherman's Friends - One and AllSaturday, 20 August 2022
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-... Read more... |
