New album: Channelling the spirit and sound of the Delta and Appalachian Mountains, a superbly evocative, haunting, powerful new release by the Anglo-Irish Londoners with reworked traditional blues and gospel given a stirring new lease of life
Read moreVieux Farka Touré: Les Racines
New album: Exquisite seventh studio album by Boureima "Vieux" Farka Touré, Malian singer and sublime guitarist, the player known as ‘the Hendrix of the Sahara’, as well as being the son of Mali’s great Ali Farka Touré
Read moreIbeyi: Spell 31
New album: The third album from Afro-Cuban French twins Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz is a sensual, eclectic mix of R&B, hip hop and more, drawing on their rich heritage, and inspired by a passage the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
Read moreOumou Sangaré: Timbuktu
New album: Superlative ninth LP by the Malian megastar, whose songs fuse the bright, beautiful, bluesy and West African traditional with strong social and political commentary framed with her fabulous voice, and finger-picking guitars, koras and kamele ngoni
Read moreSault: Air
New album: A sixth album in just three years by the collective run by prolific producer Inflo, aka Dean Josiah Cover, has a striking new direction - instrumental, orchestral works with brass and largely non-verbal choir parts, yet this cinematic release still has echoes of the black experience
Read moreRosalía: Motomami
New album: Entrancing third LP by the 29-year-old Catalonian star singer with a voice of huge range, mixing flamenco with reggaeton, hip hop, R&B and lush pop, feminism and food, heartbreak, the staccato with the smooth, and influences from MIA to Niña Pastori and José Mercé
Read moreOKI: Tonkori In The Moonlight
New album: Evocative, eccentric, strange and inventive album by the veteran Japanese musician of Ainu ancestry, Oki Kano 加納 沖, brings together the traditional stringed five-stringed harp, the tonkori, into a fusion with other instruments and styles, from folk to electronica and reggae
Read moreHeal & Harrow: Heal & Harrow
New album: Hauntingly stark, evocative, and chillingly beautiful folk as harpist Rachel Newton and violinist Lauren MacColl, with added spoken word commentaries in English and Gaelic, release an album of songs telling the tale of women wrongfully persecuted during Scottish witch trials in the 16th-18th centuries
Read moreLos Bitchos - Let the Festivities Begin!
Debut album: Break out the pisco and tequila! Produced by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, a joyously fun debut album by the international all-female London band who play foot-tapping instrumentals fusing surf guitar, Turkish psych, Argentine cumbia and Peruvian chicha, sporting a chic 60s look
Read moreImarhan: Aboogi
New album: Mesmerically beautiful third LP by the Algerian tuareg desert quintet, all atwirl with superb vocals, clever layering, intricate guitar work, and a somehow wonderfully entwined guest vocal appearance by Gruff Rhys
Read moreAnaïs Mitchell: Anaïs Mitchell
New album: Beautiful, classic singer-songwriter sixth LP from the Vermont folk artist, best known for Broadway success with the 2010 album and musical Hadestown, these finely crafted low-key piano and guitar-led numbers compare favourably with 1970s Joni Mitchell or Aimee Mann
Read moreJake Xerxes Fussell: The Good and Green Again
New album: Beautifully smooth guitar picking and a warm, mellow voice mark out this glowingly lovely latest LP by the folk artist from Columbus, Georgia, in a collection of traditionals and originals with a theme of loss and renewal
Read moreBen McElroy: How I Learnt to Disengage from the Pack
New album: Sparse, haunting, lo-fi and truly beautiful and transcendent new LP by the Wirral-born Nottingham-based folk musician, featuring bright beautiful guitars, strange drones, field recordings and gorgeous fiddle playing
Read moreFavourite albums of 2021 - Part 2
Favourite albums of 2021 – Part 2: Welcome the second instalment, following Part 1, which can be found here. A huge number of excellent releases, of which again this is just a selection many of which were written during, and about lockdown, but also saw many outstanding voices emerge as well as innovative sounds developed
Read moreFavourite albums of 2021 - Part 1
Favourite albums of 2021, part 1: Another difficult year for everyone, but from soul and jazz, electro-pop the experimental and avant-garde, an outstanding one for music releases, perhaps in part because out of diversity comes great art. Also feel free to explore Part 2, which is now available to view here.
Read moreHoueida Hedfi: Fleuves De L’Âme
New album: A gorgeous, entrancing debut by the Tunisian percussionist joined by fellow violin player Radhi Chaouali and Palestinian bouzouk player Jalal Nader in a brilliant fusion of North African, Middle Eastern and western styles to evoke the voices of rivers
Read moreRobert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raise The Roof
New album: Fourteen years after their award-winning album Raising Sand, the pair reunite with another very fine covers album, ably produced by T Bone Burnett, of blues, country, soul, but also now infusing English folk
Read moreThe Witching Tale: The Witching Tale
New album: Perfect for long, dark, wintry nights, a beguilingly beautiful mix of medieval, folk, ghostly tales and fables mixed with the modern by Katharine Blake of Mediaeval Baebes and Miranda Sex Garden, collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Michael J York
Read morePokey LaFarge: In The Blossom of Their Shade
New album: After 2020’s mischievously dark Rock Bottom Rhapsody, Illinois-born Andrew Heissler returns with his cherry-picking persona of Americana styles with a bright, clever and upbeat assortment of 1930s jazz, country, Hawaiian, calypso, folk and New Orleans R&B shuffle
Read moreThe Specials: Protest Songs 1924-2012
New album: Uplifting, cleverly chosen and beautifully performed, the great Coventry band return with an album of timeless covers from folk to blues and ska, recorded during lockdown and perfectly reflecting the urgency of the times without being dogmatic
Read more