folk music
Albums of the Year 2021: Katherine Priddy - The Eternal Rocks BeneathWednesday, 22 December 2021
Katherine Priddy’s debut album came out in the summer, and it’s remained a high point for the rest of the year as 2021 plays out to the sombre drums and drones of resurgent pandemic warnings, fresh lockdowns, closed venues, silenced auditoriums. Her... Read more... |
First Person: Harpist Rachel Newton on creating music to accompany two well-loved books celebrating nature, poetry and magicThursday, 16 December 2021
I am fortunate to be one of the musicians involved in Spell Songs, a musical companion piece to both The Lost Words and The Lost Spells by acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane and award-winning illustrator and author Jackie Morris.There have been... Read more... |
The Men They Couldn't Hang, Powerhaus Camden review - raucous farewell to the fallenTuesday, 14 December 2021
To clarify: this is less a review, more a dispatch from a raucous wake. We all have a band that means something extra. Mine is The Men They Couldn't Hang, who I saw on Saturday night at the Powerhaus in Camden for the umpteenth time.I first came... Read more... |
Album: Kathryn Williams & Carol Ann Duffy - Midnight ChorusMonday, 13 December 2021
Liverpudlian singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams has always had a literary bent. This doesn’t just manifest in overt ways, like writing a concept album about Sylvia Plath in 2015’s Hypoxia, but in perfectly potted narratives, microscopically... Read more... |
Album: Justin Adams & Mauro Durante - Still MovingFriday, 26 November 2021
Adams has long been Robert Plant’s guitarist in bands including the Sensational Space Shifters, as well as working with fellow Space Shifter Juldeh Camara in the band JuJu. He is steeped in American Blues as well as its West African and Desert Blues... Read more... |
Grace Petrie, Summerhall, Edinburgh review - songs of solidarityMonday, 22 November 2021
“How to explain Theresa May?” Grace Petrie muses from the Summerhall stage as she introduces decade-old opener “Farewell To Welfare”. “Well, in 2010, she was as bad as we thought it was going to get.”That is, on the face of it, the problem with... Read more... |
Black String, Grand Junction review – storm-force intensitySaturday, 30 October 2021
If you were looking for a word to describe Black String in performance at Grand Junction in Paddington, before the high altar of the church of St Mary Magdalene, itself a pinnacle of Victorian neo-Gothic bravura, then that word would be “intense”.... Read more... |
Williams, City of London Sinfonia, Southwark Cathedral review - a British Isles cornucopiaFriday, 29 October 2021
A year ago, the City of London Sinfonia’s quietly different concerts in Southwark Cathedral were a lifeline in the twilight of semi-lockdown; I’ll never forget how we treasured the last, on 17 November, knowing that everything would be closed again... Read more... |
Laura Marling, Roundhouse review - simple and compellingThursday, 21 October 2021
Laura Marling was one of the most active lockdown performance artists, doing her bit to play solo streams to a captive and culturally starved virtual audience.The simplicity of her uninterrupted sets, low production values and absence of small talk... Read more... |
Album: The Specials - Protest Songs 1924 - 2012Thursday, 30 September 2021
When The Specials returned with their chart-topping 2019 album Encore, it was a wonderful surprise. As well as being their first in nearly four decades (excluding material by alternately named intermediary incarnations), it proved they were more... Read more... |
Nicola Benedetti, Barbican Hall review – from Bach to the Highlands via New OrleansFriday, 24 September 2021
If a standard-sized recital hall can be a lonely place for a solo violinist, playing an auditorium of Barbican dimensions must feel like crossing a desert under pitiless spotlight sun. Happily, Nicola Benedetti’s prowess as a communicator means that... Read more... |
Ben Howard, Royal Festival Hall review - authentic and reassuringTuesday, 21 September 2021
Ben Howard is a man of very few words, unless of course, there’s a guitar accompanying them.These are his first shows since the start of lockdown but all he says about that is “thanks for coming out this evening”. Hobbling onto the stage with his... Read more... |
