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War Child: HELP(2) follows 1995’s first compilation with another impressive range of music and artists
New album: Not only a timely and topical milestone charity record following the first in 1995 to help bring aid and wide variety of support to children in war zones around he world, but an impressive double-LP array of stellar British and international talent and powerful, poignant 23 songs from Arctic Monkeys to Young Fathers
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Bonnie “Prince” Billy: We Are Together Again
New album: Just over a year after 2025’s The Purple Bird, but from parallel recording sessions and familiar co-musicians, the veteran Louisville-Kentucky singer-songwriter Will Oldham returns with another collection of exquisite, intimate, gently defiant lo-fi folk to troubled times, an ode to community with a beautiful array of acoustic instruments and his poignant, insightful lyrics and delivery
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Iron & Wine: Hen's Teeth
New album: Timeless, poetic, gentle folk-rock in this eighth solo album by the North Carolina multi-instrumentalist and producer Sam Beam, in warm, tender album with a title that suggests the idea of the impossible yet real, and an earthier, darker, more more tactile companion to his Grammy-nominated 2024 album Light Verse
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Buck Meek: The Mirror
New album: The Brooklyn-based Texan guitarist of Big Thief returns with his fourth solo LP filled with tender, thoughtful, beautiful folk-country-rock, a tiny splash of analogue synths, joined by bandmate James Krivchenia as producer, Adrianne Lenker on backing vocals, plus guitarist Adam Brisbin and harp player Mary Lattimore
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Bill Callahan: My Days of 58
New album: His first since 2022’s REALITY, and one of his finest for several years since his many albums under the Smog moniker, the Texan, rich-voiced, witty, droll, singer-songwriter returns with lo-fi, resonant, frank reflections from his 58 years, on songwriting, family life, touring and death, with a free-flowing, sometimes improvised sound that refreshing, stripped back and direct
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Hedera: Hedera
New album: A beautiful, delicate, minimalist debut of finely crafted chamber folk by the Bristol quintet of Lulu Austin, Maisie Brett, Tamsin Elliott, Beth Roberts and Isis Wolf-Light mixing originals and the traditional with flavours and influences from England to Egypt, Bulgaria to Bali, Afrikaans to Arabic, Ireland to Georgia
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Hen Ogledd: DISCOMBOBULATED
New album: Wonderfully colourful, mystical and socio-political, the British psychedelic-folk-rock quartet return with their special brand of eccentric, oddball originality, here including Welsh poems, ‘bard rap’ and an a protest manifesto for social change and mental wellbeing in a world gone mad
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Cardinals: Masquerade
New album: Awash with passionate anguish and swaggering post-punk indie and gnarly energy, a strikingly impressive debut by the Cork five-piece, coloured by seething, stormy vocals and guitars, and flavoured by a distinctively rich accordion sound
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Alice Costelloe: Move On With the Year
New album: A beautifully delicate, melodious, thoughtful and poetic indie-folk-pop debut, following EPs, by the London singer-songwriter, formerly of shoe-gaze band Big Deal, here on themes of grief and growth, purging, personal rebuilding and creative detangling
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Beverley Glenn-Copeland: Laughter In Summer
New album: Delightful, charming, old-fashioned, touching, tender and timeless, this late-career LP from from 82-year-old American-born Canadian singer alongside partner Elizabeth is a love letter to their companionship, and an embrace of the inevitable
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Geologist: Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights?
New album: The hurdy-gurdy never quite sounded like this before. Animal Collective multi-instrumentalist Brian Weitz is the final member of that experimental collective to release a solo album, and it’s a bizarre journey of oddball sounds and instruments looped through guitar pedal effects krautrock repetitive, meditational exploratory spirit, inhaled through the titular reference to his past as a smoker
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Ye Vagabonds: All Tied Together
New album: Beautiful, evocative, poetic and profound original folk numbers with a traditional style by Irish brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn in their fourth LP, recorded live in a Galway house with acclaimed producer Philip Weinrobe (Big Thief, Adrianne Lenker), and vivid lyrical themes of home and memory
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Tessa Rose Jackson: The Lighthouse
New album: Beautiful, intricate, understated, poetic and intelligent, this warm, inviting experimental folk by the Dutch-British singer-songwriter is the first LP under her own name, having previously released three as the artist Someone
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The Paper Kites: If You Go There, I Hope You Find It
New album: Warm, tender, gently-paced, calmly reflective, beautifully soothing, poetic, melancholic alternative folk and Americana by the band from Melbourne in their seventh LP in 15 years
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Courtney Marie Andrews: Valentine
New album: Emotional, beautiful, stirring, Americana, folk and indie-pop by singer-songwriter from Phoenix, Arizona, in this latest studio LP in of soaring voice, strong melodies, love, vulnerability and heartbreak, longing and bravery
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Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic
New album: Delicate, beautiful, ethereal, meditative new work by the two American experimental composers in their first collaborative LP, with gentle understated vocals, classic synth sounds, and rare harps chosen from from the Paris Musée de la Musique Collection
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Part Two favourite albums of 2025 collage
Welcome to the second part of Song Bar favourite albums of 2025. There is also a first part and a third part this week. There is no countdown nor describing these necessarily as “best” albums of the year, but they are chosen by their quality, originality and reader popularity
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First selection of 25 favourite albums in no particular order …
Welcome to the first part of Song Bar favourite albums of 2025. There will also be a second and third part this week. There is no countdown nor describing these necessarily as “best” albums of the year, but they are chosen by their quality, originality and reader popularity
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Dove Ellis: Blizzard
New album: An extraordinarily mature, passionate, poetic, and outstandingly powerful debut by the Manchester-based Galway-born singer-songwriter, whose soaring delivery has instant echoes of Jeff Buckley and lyrics that go above and beyond
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Ólöf Arnalds: Spíra
New album: A gorgeous, delicate, ethereal first release in a decade by the Icelandic singer-songwriter, acoustic instruments and her gentle, high, pure voice, all in her native language, caressing this listening experience like pure waters of some slowly trickling glacial stream
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