singer-songwriters
Album: Peter Gabriel - I/OWednesday, 29 November 2023![]() Some 28 years in gestation, Peter Gabriel’s eighth studio album of wholly original songs – his first since 2002’s Up – will delight his fans and top the charts. Gabriel’s best instrument remains his voice, that husky marvel, which is at its most... Read more... |
Album: Abigail Lapell - LullabiesWednesday, 22 November 2023![]() Abigail Lapell is a singer feted and given awards in her homeland of Canada, but who has yet to reach far outside it. Folk is her metier but only insofar as it’s Joni Mitchell’s.Five albums into her career, inspired by COVID lockdown-induced... Read more... |
Christine Tobin, EFG London Jazz Festival, World Heart Beat review - an enchanting ode to homeSaturday, 18 November 2023This UK premiere of the award-winning, Dublin-born vocalist and composer Christine Tobin’s latest project, Returning Weather, presented an otherworldly ode to finding home – casting multiple perspectives on our yearning for connection and human... Read more... |
Album: Devendra Banhart - Flying WigThursday, 21 September 2023![]() Had Devendra Banhart been born between 1940 and 1950, he’d likely be a household name. His output – very loosely – sits between Cat Stevens, Syd Barrett and Richie Havens, studded with a greatness not widely acknowledged. He had a spell around 15-20... Read more... |
Album: Laura Groves - Radio RedThursday, 10 August 2023![]() “Sky at Night” begins Radio Red. Its brooding atmosphere is shared with Saint Etienne’s “Hobart Paving.” Also, a sinuous sense of melody is at one with Todd Rundgren’s finest ballads. Melodic filigrees suggest Laura Nyro or Brighton band The Mummers... Read more... |
Album: William The Conqueror - Excuse Me While I VanishThursday, 03 August 2023![]() Ruarri Joseph is not a household name but in a Sliding Doors scenario, he might have been. Scottish, raised in New Zealand, and based in Cornwall, he signed to Atlantic in 2007, and had the same management as Damien Rice and David Gray. His output... Read more... |
Judy Collins, Cambridge Folk Festival review - celebrating a seminal Sixties' albumMonday, 31 July 2023![]() It’s 15 years since Judy Collins last stepped out at the Cambridge Folk Festival. She was a mere 68 then and, in the time since, little has changed except her hair, the famous rock-star mane lopped so that she now resembles the cover of those... Read more... |
Album: Maria Wilman - Dark HorseMonday, 31 July 2023![]() Although Dark Horse is Maria Wilman’s first album, it feels as though it’s the latest entry in a string of releases. The songs are fully formed. The delivery is assured. The overall character of what’s heard is cohesive, suggesting the person who... Read more... |
Julie Byrne, Juni Habel, Kings Place review - finely tuned evening balancing dark with lightThursday, 27 July 2023![]() It’s probably an unconscious action. Sat on a stage-centre chair, Julie Byrne sings. The two acoustic guitars she plays for about half the set are beside her, on their racks. One hand is above the other, palms down. Each moves side-to-side in a... Read more... |
Album: Dot Allison - ConsciousologyThursday, 27 July 2023![]() This album promises to be an expansion of the sound and ideas of its 2021 predecessor Heart Shaped Scars, and boy does it deliver. HSS was the Scottish singer-songwriter Dot Allison’s first album in some nine years, and only her... Read more... |
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, BST Hyde Park review - Saturday in the park with BruceSunday, 09 July 2023![]() First things first. The support acts at events like this usually get completely overlooked, but it would be frankly criminal not to give a mention to a superb set by the Chicks. They dropped the “Dixie” from their original name because of its now “... Read more... |
Album: Julie Byrne - The Greater WingsMonday, 03 July 2023![]() “Summer Glass” is The Greater Wings’ fourth track. A synthesiser pulse evoking water dripping from eaves unites with glistening harp arpeggios and muted strings. The voice weaving through this is distant, shrouded in fog. Lyrics are about “being... Read more... |
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