Folk music

Following on from the success of his last album, What Matters Most, singer-songwriter Ben Folds dishes up an early festive treat with Sleigher, a delightful assortment of original songs and reimagined Christmas classics. Most of the album is a solo effort, Folds layering vocals and instruments to weave the tracks, however there are also some collaborations: Ross...

The intimate nature of Laura Marling’s eighth studio album is apparent before she has even played a note. We hear shuffling, voices, a yelp from Marling’s infant daughter, as they get themselves arranged in the home studio where Patterns In Repeat was recorded. Parenthood is unsurprisingly a recurring theme in Marling’s first record since she became a...

by Bob Fish • 18 October 2024 • Comments Off on Album | The W Lovers – For a Day or a Lifetime Fleur and Wesley Wood make an interesting couple. He’s from the state of Washington, while she hails from New Zealand. Since meeting in 2014, they have created a musical blend marrying acoustic instruments with heartfelt lyrics and pure...

One of the great lost treasures among record collectors is Buckingham Nicks, an album released over fifty years ago, long out of print, never officially released on CD and unavailable on streaming services like iTunes. Featuring a pre-Fleetwood Mac Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, the album (a commercial failure in 1973) has attained a mythical status with...

The musical path Jason Isbell has taken isn’t recommended. At the age of 22 he joined the Drive-By Truckers, ending up addicted to alcohol and coke, eventually being asked by the rest of the band to leave. Sober for over a decade, he has taken control of his life, making the kind of choices that lead one...

John Murry has lived a series of nightmares. At times it plays like a William Faulkner novel, no surprise since he was adopted before birth by his parents in an agreement with a pregnant Cherokee schoolgirl. Raised by his grandmother (Faulkner’s first cousin) he was sent to a fundamentalist Christian rehab center for smoking and drinking where...

In The Dark We Grow is the fourth full-length album by UK-based folk duo Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage and takes listeners down a different path than their introspective 2022 release Ink of the Rosy Morning, which was born in the throes of the pandemic (perhaps the ‘dark’ from which this album grew). This offering boasts an...

The human condition. It is immeasurably complex, multi- faceted, beautiful and terrible, mournful yet joyous – and it has been an endless fountain of inspiration for artists through the ages. It is into this source that Tennessee-born singer-songwriter Kate Prascher taps with her debut full-length album ShakeThe Dust. It takes an honest, raw look into human experience,...

David Rawlings & Gillian Welch Challenges come in many forms. For Gilliam Welch and David Rawlings one of the biggest was just surviving the hurricane that tore the roof off their Woodland Studio just as Covid was putting the world into a forced hibernation in 2020. By the light of an iPhone they moved boxes full of...

One of Europe’s best folk festivals returns to Cambridgeshire parkland with around 14,000 people attending across the three and a half days crammed with folk music from around the world. The line-up boasts big names and relative unknowns. There’s unanimous delight expressed from all four stages about playing at this prestigious festival, which continues to do long...