folk music
Tim Cumming
Kings of the South Seas first set sail back in 2014, with their debut album drawing on songs about South Pacific whalers. They are Ben Nicholls on concertina, banjo and fine, sonorous vocals, Spiritualized guitarist Richard Warren and drummer with the Neil Cowley Trio, Evan Jenkins. On a polar vortex of a midwinter night they launched their second album in the theatre aboard the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, where endurance and engulfment took centre stage as the harsh Victorian tale of maritime derring-do unfolded with the story of John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to discover the North West Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Bach: Brandenburg Concertos 1-6 Berliner Barock Solisten/Reinhard Goebel (Sony)This set’s arrival sent me scurrying back to listen again to Reinhard Goebel's 1985 DG set of Bach’s Brandenburgs with Musica Antiqua Koln: hyperactive, sharp-edged performances which still sound disarmingly fresh. The issue back then was Goebel’s propensity to adopt speeds on the edge of playability: I'm showing my age in remembering that I could squeeze his set onto a single C90 cassette. Happy days. The Third Concerto was the jaw-dropper, its second movement improbably, ludicrously swift. This new set Read more ...
Joe Muggs
If you see any list of greatest living drummers and the Australian Jim White isn't on it, you should look at it askance. Since he started Dirty Three in the early '90s, White has played with the cream of global alt-rock musicians: the Nick Caves, PJ Harveys, Cat Powers and Will Oldhams. But he's way, way more than a sideman, and the closer he is to the front of the stage, the more interesting the music will be.His playing is uniquely conversational and interactive, locking into and rolling around whatever foil is presented to it, often making him closer to a free jazz player than a rock Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ilmamõtsan’s centrepiece is “Linnaitk”, a disconcerting vocal-only composition playing distress-permeated chants off against a keening wordless melody line sounding as much an expression of grief as a call for support. The language is Estonian and “Linnaitk” translates as “City Lament”. It is written to capture the feelings of a mother whose daughter has left the village for the big city. As urban populations grow, rural settlements shrink, and personal losses are accompanied by irreversible changes in the fabric of society.While not all of Ilmamõtsan is this overtly affecting, the album Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1972, just 2000 copies of Bright Phoebus were pressed. Half were off-centre and unplayable. This year, the first conscientious reissue of the album hit 31 in the British album chart. Although it has been a cult favourite for the last couple of decades, the success was nonetheless surprising. Sales and an imponderable future were unlikely to have been on the minds of anyone involved in the recording of this folk-rooted singer-songwriter masterpiece.Bright Phoebus was credited as an album showcasing the songs of siblings Lal & Mike Waterson – it was not strictly by Lal & Mike Read more ...
Matthew Wright
All things considered, there aren’t many criteria by which this album, however cosmopolitan its influences, sensitive and precise its vocals and supple its rhythms, is really the best of the year. I’ve had a few sleepless nights recently over the growing suspicion that, for example, Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN, and several contemporary jazz recordings – to mention only what I’ve been following closely – do more that’s landmark-constructingly novel. It’s unlikely, come 2042, that Cubafonia will feature in one of those vox-pop retrospectives that populate the BBC Two schedules with such Read more ...
Tim Cumming
I’ve only seen Olivia Chaney perform live a handful of times – once at a Copper Family celebration at Cecil Sharp House, 10,000 Times Adieu, singing unaccompanied with Lisa Knapp and Nancy Wallace, and at the nestcollective’s Unamplifire festival at the Master Shipwright’s Palace in Deptford one chilly St George’s Day. There, she performed solo, at the piano, and her voice and her music was sensational.She sang from her debut album of original songs, The Longest River, but I wish she’d chosen a few from the album she released this year with Portland, Oregon indie rockers the Decembrists. Read more ...
Katie Colombus
2017 has been a time of change if not turmoil, on both personal and political stratospheres. So the music of two sisters whose jam is made up primarily of protest and healing songs, is the perfect antidote.When chaos abounds, the relentless positivism of this music from the new age RISE collective, soothes like prozac for the soul. Based between Southern Appalachia and New Orleans, Leah and Chloe Smith are independently produced multi-instrumentalists who take inspiration from their home and history as well as their travels. The result is a mesmirising mash-up of free folk, acoustic dance Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For the past few years my Album of the Year has leapt out at me, craved attention, stood out from the competition. With no disrespect to Nick Mulvey’s fine second album, that wasn’t the case in 2017. Many albums this year had vital, enjoyable music, but marred by much lesser songs. Especially notable in this vein were Katy Perry and Kesha, the best of whose albums, Witness and Rainbow, was rarely far from my car stereo, perfect 21st century girl-pop and sassy eclectic comeback material, respectively. However, neither boasted the consistency of, say, Beyoncé’s Lemonade of last year.There were Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A nineteen-minute adaptation of “Jack Orion” took up the whole of Side Two of Cruel Sister, Pentangle’s fourth album. It's the highlight of the smart but blandly titled 115-track box set The Albums 1968–1972. Up to this point in 1970, British folk rock had not spawned anything comparable to the epic “Jack Orion”. Extending a traditional song to this length in such spellbinding fashion was ambitious and while some of John Renbourne’s electric guitar suggested the fluidity of Quicksilver Messenger Service’s John Cipollina, the overall effect was of a band magnificently pushing what they did to Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Nothing beats a great singer-songwriter live and unadorned. So it was with Tom Russell at London’s 100 Club on the penultimate night of his UK tour. Accompanied by his faithful friend the brilliant Milanese Max Bernadino on guitar, the man whom Lawrence Ferlinghetti describes as “Johnny Cash, Jim Harrison and Charles Bukowski rolled into one” gave a brilliant performance which was a masterclass in audience engagement.Russell’s most recent album Folk Hotel featured prominently, already very familiar to everyone present it seemed, and there was an early dip into his 2015 folk opera The Rose of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the Hardanger Fiddle is regarded as a traditional Norwegian instrument, its use stretches back to no earlier than the middle of the 17th century. The music players summon from its strings is more easily seen as traditional though: music to dance to. Tuned differently to a standard fiddle, the hardingfele does not have a set amount of strings but instead has four for playing and four or five resonating, sympathetic strings underlying those which are bowed. The baroque viola d'amore, which also has sympathetic strings, is a near relative. Once heard, the keening, resonant power of the Read more ...