folk music
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There’s a certain sound - one that I’d describe as “pastoral folk”, without ever being certain of what that means - that has always struck me as quintessentially English. Jenny Lysander’s debut album is one that ticks many of those boxes: sparse arrangements, ageless vocals, even a song called “Lavender Philosophy”, which is about as pastoral as it gets without involving grazing animals. To immerse oneself, dreamily, in Northern Folk is to feel as you did the first time you heard Laura Marling and wonder how one so young could create something so wise and so timeless (at 21, Lysander is just Read more ...
fisun.guner
There’s no doubting the precocious talent of Laura Marling. At just 25 she recently released her fifth album, Short Movie, which matched the spiky introspection of song-writing previously driven by folk melodies with a new rock-orientated sound. Inspired by her two-year sojourn in LA, from which she returned late last year, the album tells of the usual romantic yearnings and scorned or broken love affairs, mixed with tales of everyday encounters with new age Californian mystics. A sense of both the expansive West Coast landscape and of cosmic space meets altered consciousness, prevailed. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bert Jansch: Bert JanschNorth Villas is a short street parallel to Camden Road, the main artery linking Camden Town to Holloway in north London. It’s off Camden Square, where Amy Winehouse lived and died. In August 1964, Bill Leader began recording what would become Bert Jansch’s debut album in his home at 5 North Villas. The first-floor flat had two living rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. Leader would set up his tape recorder in the same room as who he was recording and monitor what was being caught on tape through headphones.At the same time as Leader was using his home as a recording Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Mike Rosenberg kept the name "Passenger" for his solo folk-pop project even when the rest of the band left in 2009, even though, for a one-man outfit, the concept of being a passenger is a curious one. (Who’s driving then?) For the most part, this 16-song, two-CD release continues the gentle-sounding but hard-hitting storytelling of last year’s Whispers. That album didn’t make too many waves (the hit single “Let Her Go” made up for that) but confirmed Rosenberg’s reputation among folk-pop connoisseurs – happy for Ed Sheeran and James Blunt to be spoiled by raving attention – for grit and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fotheringay: Nothing More – The Collected FotheringayComing to the sole Fotheringay album cold undermines received opinion it was a side issue in Sandy Denny’s career: a stepping-stone between leaving Fairport Convention and going solo. The band’s eponymous 1970 album opens with “Nothing More” and “The Sea”, two absolutely fantastic Denny songs performed with affecting and brooding sensitivity. Then the album shifts gear. “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, written and sung by her partner Trevor Lucas, is a dreary re-write of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”. Anyone influenced by The Band could Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Very often, the greatest impact comes without shouting. Subtlety can have a power lingering longer than the two-minute thrill of a yell. So it is with Bridges, the eighth album by Eivør. In the past, the Faroese singer-songwriter has collaborated with Canada’s Bill Bourne, the Danish Radio Big Band and Ireland’s Donal Lunny, and taken turns into country and jazz. Bridges builds on her last album though, 2012’s Room, as further evidence that she is now more focused than ever.Bridges is an all English-language album. It opens with the elegiac “Remember Me”: the song asks “Will I leave a Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Sam Lee launched his second album this week, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his Mercury-nominated debut, A Ground of it Own. The Fade In Time has been garnering five-star reviews like poesies in May, and for good reason – Lee is a distinctly 21st-century artist, collecting new versions of old songs on his iPhone and laptop, while his repertoire is steeped in the reek and smoke of folk history and lore, its tales of love, parting, exile and murder bound by a sympathetic magic still resonant today, parting the veil on vivid scenes from our islands’ deep history.There had been concerts Read more ...
fisun.guner
What was that about the difficult second album? If you thought Ground of its own, Sam Lee’s Mercury-nominated album of 2012, broke new and fertile ground for traditional folk music, then you’ll find The Fade of Time even richer, even more musically ambitious. Here on this 12-track disc is an evocative and heady brew of global influences, featuring the koto, conch, uke, banjo, hunting horns, Jew’s harp, a variety of brass and strings, and wow, not an acoustic guitar to be heard. If you think you know folk, then you don’t know Sam Lee.Sampled sounds, from mineral to animal, archive material of Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Fairport Convention might have been around for almost 50 years, but they still clearly know how to deliver timeless quality. Their new album, made up of all new tracks (a departure from the previous album By Popular Request which comprised re-recorded oldies-but-goodies) – some written by band member Chris Leslie with guest tracks by folk legend Ralph McTell and multi-faceted Anna Ryder, ties in with a UK tour running until the summer.Myths & Heroes is well put together, a mixture of jaunty upbeat melodies, romantic fiddle, old school folk and a good old Celtic resonance. The album Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bridget St. John: Dandelion Albums & BBC CollectionPigeonholing Bridget St. John is gratifyingly difficult. Although generally categorised as folk, her early albums actually posited her as a singer-songwriter following her own path. Like her similarly restrained contemporary Nick Drake, she did not have a background in folk clubs. And also like him, her voice was huskily intimate. Her intonation was very English, yet there was a hint of Nico’s Teutonic drama.There was no traditional material in St. John’s repertoire, but she did cover Donovan. Buddy Holly too. She also interpreted Read more ...
Mick Houghton
Sandy Denny was well known within the folk world by 1968 (writes Kieron Tyler). Although the recordings were as-yet unreleased, in July 1967 she had recorded with The Strawbs. She featured on two albums which were in the shops in August 1967: Alex Campbell and His Friends, and Sandy and Johnny, made with Johnny Silvo. Early the next year, she was contemplating her next move.The story is picked up in Mick Houghton’s I’ve Always Kept A Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny as Fairport Convention audition for a new singer in the wake of Judy Dyble being asked to leave the band. The group already Read more ...
peter.quinn
Taking its title from the opening line of WB Yeats's The Second Coming, this new album from legendary traditional Irish band Altan sees them decamp to Nashville for an imaginative, celebratory exploration of the links between traditional Irish and American roots music. It also allows them to collaborate with many of the musical friends they've made along their 30-plus years journey.Listeners looking for the uniquely driving tune sets that Altan are famous for have plenty to get their teeth into, not least “Buffalo Gals/Leather Britches/Leslie's Reel”, which includes a bracing gear change from Read more ...