folk music
Album: Kurt Vile - (Watch My Moves)Wednesday, 13 April 2022
Although the term “hipster” has become degraded to well beyond cliché, Kurt Vile is one of those artists whose fans may indeed have that in-the-know smugness. With Vile, though, this is not a bad thing. Given the increasingly confidence-shedding... Read more... |
Album: Sirom - The Liquified Throne of SimplicityMonday, 11 April 2022
Expansive, free-form, handmade and improvised, the extravagantly-titled The Liquified Throne of Simplicity is the fourth album from this freewheeling Slovenian trio of multi-instrumentalists. They forage among the world’s musics as well as their own... Read more... |
Album: Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage - Ink of the Rosy MorningThursday, 31 March 2022
What an exquisite album! Beautiful voices that harmonise to perfection, superlative instrumental work, and songs both new and old yet all somehow familiar and timeless. Ink of the Rosy Morning: A Sampling of Folk Songs from Britain and North America... Read more... |
The Weather Station, Scala review - communion achieved against the oddsThursday, 24 March 2022
Acknowledging the contrast between personal and public situations, The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman says “I have a lot of songs about not being heard, yet I’m holding this microphone.” An individual’s voice can be ignored, but if it’s given a... Read more... |
Album: Jenny Hval - Classic ObjectsThursday, 10 March 2022
Norwegian artist Jenny Hval is a novelist as well as a singer-songwriter, and her new album certainly has a literary approach to music making.Classic Objects is made of up little stories set to music - standalone units of narrative outside of the... Read more... |
Album: Cécile McLorin Salvant - Ghost SongSaturday, 26 February 2022
When 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award winner Cécile McLorin Salvant previewed some of the material from her forthcoming album to an enraptured audience at Cadogan Hall as part of last year’s EFG London Jazz Festival, you sensed that... Read more... |
Wuthering Heights, National Theatre review - too much heat, not enough lightFriday, 11 February 2022
“If you want romance,” the cast of Emma Rice’s new version of Wuthering Heights say in unison just after the interval, “go to Cornwall.” They’re using the modern definition of romance, of course – Emily Brontë’s novel is full of the original meaning... Read more... |
Album: Andy Bell - FlickerFriday, 04 February 2022
Ride guitarist Andy Bell has clearly been busy since the release of his solo debut, 2020’s The View From Halfway Down. As well as getting his Space Station instrumental touring show up and running, he’s found time to record a sprawling, 18-track... Read more... |
Album: Le Vent du Nord - 20 PrintempsThursday, 03 February 2022
What a joyous album for a grey winter’s day, any day in fact – a celebration of 20 springs by Le Vent du Nord, a wonderful five-piece band that hails from frigid Quebec and who make it their business to explore and collect the folk music of French-... Read more... |
Album: Spell Songs II – Let the Light InThursday, 13 January 2022
The first set of Spell Songs, The Lost Words, was inspired by nature writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris’s spell-spinning mission to bring back those ‘lost words’ from the natural world that had been excised from children’s... Read more... |
Folk, Hampstead Downstairs review - thoughtful play about folklorist Cecil SharpThursday, 06 January 2022
Cecil Sharp, heritage hero or imperialist appropriator? If you attended school in the first half of the 20th century, you would have sung from his collections of English folk songs, and probably gritted your teeth and performed the country dances he... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2021: Eliane Elias - Mirror MirrorMonday, 03 January 2022
After watching so many gigs through a computer screen, it was a joy to hear live music again in familiar haunts – from Ronnie Scott’s and the Southbank to Grand Junction, Paddington – in 2021. It made you appreciate anew not only the high-wire... Read more... |
