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Zoh Amba: Eyes Full
New album: The NY-scene free jazz saxophonist forms an indie-folk-country-rock-muddy-blues trio with fabulously strong results in this passionate, raw, free-flowing debut as guitarist-singer-songwriter, lyrics themed around their original hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee, and coloured by Appalachian roots
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Greg Mendez: Beauty Land
New album: A gently ironic title, but no doubting beauty of the sound, reminiscent of the late, great Elliott Smith, this new gem of a lo-fi LP is full of mildly tragic, sensitive, thoughtful 14 short numbers by the Philadelphia high falsetto singer-songwriter
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Magic Tuber Stringband: Heavy Water
New album: Mesmerically skilful, oddly beautiful expressive and sometimes powerfully disturbing experimental instrumental folk and bluegrass by the debut South Carolina trio of fiddler Courtney Werner, guitarist Evan Morgan and bassist/banjoist Michael Devito, together weaving extraordinary sounds within and beyond traditional on a dark and tragic ecological theme
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Marisa Anderson: The Anthology Of UnAmerican Folk Music
New album: Beautifully evocative instrumental interpretations of older folk tunes from Southeast Asia, the USSR and the Arabic and Islamic regions of the world, all areas subject to US conflict since 1970s, brought by by the American guitarist from the private 78rpm archive of the late Harry Smith
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Rostam: American Stories
New album: The Iranian-American singer-songwriter, star producer and Vampire Weekend co-founder Rostam Batmanglij’s third solo LP mixes Americana with Persian sounds in a mellow, beautiful reflection of love songs also inspired by challenging, changing times
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Kevin Morby: Little Wide Open
New album: The Kansas City-raised singer-songwriter’s eighth solo LP of folk, rock and country is inspired by Missouri’s vast space, and features guests including Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) with production by The National’s Aaron Dessner
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Aldous Harding: Train on the Island
New album: The enigmatic New Zealand artist returns with her fifth album, a blend of folk and experimental rock packed with gnomic lyrics and experimental musical blends, her beguiling presence as deliciously strange as ever in another release co-produced with long-time collaborator John Parish
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Chris Brain: Red Sun Rising
New album: Beautifully warm, quiet, tender and bucolic new folk LP by the Yorkshire-based singer-songwriter, following a pastoral tradition of landscapes literal and emotional, very much influenced by and echoing the delivery of Nick Drake
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Jesca Hoop: Long Wave Home
New album: Brilliantly inventive, eclectic, poetic, experimental folk and art-pop by the acclaimed Manchester-based Californian singer-songwriter and guitarist in her first self-produced album, variously about the end of relationships, life changes, technology’s social effects, Gaza victims and other contemporary issues with perhaps her finest yet
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Sam Grassie: Where Two Hawks Fly
New album: Beautiful debut LP by the London-based Glaswegian fingerstyle folk guitarist and singer-songwriter, with added saxophone, double bass, flute, clairsach and clarinet in a release of mostly the traditional, covers, sung or instrumental, and supported by the Bert Jansch Foundation
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Gia Margaret: Singing
New album: Gently profound, and full of wondrous, mesmeric, slow, delicate experimental songs, this simple title has a powerful resonance – it is the Chicago artist’s first vocal album since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer (there have been two instrumental LPs since), having suffered and recovered from a severe vocal injury, she returns with a delicate, candid, whispery but hauntingly beautiful delivery
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Angelo De Augustine: Angel in Plainclothes
New album: A beautiful, delicate fifth LP from the Los Angeles singer-songwriter, friend and collaborator with Sufjan Stevens with whom he shares a stylistic resemblance, here with themes on life's fragility, second chances, and picking up the pieces after an undiagnosed illness forced him to re-learn basic abilities
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Juni Habel: Evergreen In Your Mind
New album: Exquisite, delicate, ethereal finger-picking folk by the Norwegian singer-songwriter in this third album, one that poetically and musically inhabits a mysterious half-dream state flitting between two worlds
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Pictish Trail: Life Slime
New album: Mesmeric, slow-build, mid-tempo, woozy, psychedelic-electronica folk of gentle, personal, reflective dark humour, profundity and melancholy by the Isle of Eigg-based Scottish musician Johnny Lynch in his sixth LP, here produced by Mike Lindsay of Tunng and LUMP themed around metaphorical ooze, transformation, exhaustion, hope, guilt, and renewal
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My New Band Believe self-titled debut LP
New album: A superb, rapturous swirl of energy, invention, passionate emotions and originality, this debut album by Cameron Picton, the bassist of the acclaimed British experimentalists Black Midi, features shapeshifting structures with a host of acoustic instruments, all originating from a hotel room fever dream of weird imagery and scrambled text
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Wendy Eisenberg’s self-titled album
New album: An absolutely gorgeous, delicate, subtle, brilliantly inventive LP of folk-rock-country-pop by the Brooklyn-based guitarist, improviser, composer and singer-songwriter, themed around the artist’s newfound queerness and love, all coloured by a sense of personal awe and reinvention
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MEMORIALS: All Clouds Bring Not Rain
New album: Innovative, eclectic fusion of psychedelia, folk, dub, krautrock, 60s soul, garage rock, prog, pop, electronica and 70s spiritual jazz by the Canterbury experimental duo of Verity Susman and Matthew Simms
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José González: Against The Dying Of The Light
New album: A gentle, reflective, meditative, but quietly defiant fifth LP by the Swedish-Argentine indie-folk guitarist and singer-songwriter, following his last, Local Valley, broadening his perspective in an urgent call to preserve the light of humanity as technology advances in ironically darkening world
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Pitou: P2
New album: Brilliantly quirky, original second LP of experimental folk pop by the Amsterdam artist, who has the free spirited musical adventurousness reminiscent of Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus and Fiona Apple in this clever, playful, stop-start work with oodles of vocal loops and layering, electronica and unusual field recordings across themes of freedom and restlessness
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Ellie O'Neill: Time of Fallow
New album: A gorgeous, delicate debut folk LP by the Dublin-based singer-songwriter from County Meath with an exquisite voice, not unlike that of Joni Mitchell, that hovers and rises with expressive control, with themes of memory, grief, desire, and self-reckoning
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