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Bedouine: Neon Summer Skin
New album: A serenely beautiful, but also nostalgically sorrowful fourth LP by American singer-songwriter Azniv Korkejian who has Armenian-Syrian heritage, with songs about displacement and identity, very mindful of Middle Eastern conflicts, atrocities and her family history, while broadening her sound into the lush mould of 1970s Carole King and Laurel Canyon
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Lucinda Williams: World's Gone Wrong
New album: The acclaimed veteran country, rock and Americana singer-songwriter and multi-Grammy winner’s latest LP has a title that speaks for itself, but is powerful, angry, defiant and uplifting, and, recorded in Nashville, features guest vocals from Norah Jones, Mavis Staples and Brittney Spencer
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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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S.G. Goodman: Planting By The Signs
New album: A third album of powerful, simmering, lyrically vivid, stripped-back folk, country and Americana by the singer-songwriter from Hickman, Kentucky, portraying stories and characters from a small town, with themes about the importance of and cycles of the natural world, and summoning a sound somewhere between Lucinda Williams and Cat Power
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Jason Isbell: Foxes In The Snow
New album: Following four straight albums with his band the 400 Unit, the Nashville-based Grammy-winning Alabama singer-songwriter’s latest LP is a stripped back, heartfelt, candid, beautiful set of new Americana folk with just him and his 1940 Martin acoustic guitar
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Sam Evian: Plunge
New album: A catch-up on a superb fourth rock, pop and psychedelic album released earlier this year by the US artist, the title after regular winter cold-plunges into a nearby creek at his Catskill Mountains home to create fuzzy, warm, live-feel 60s/70s sound of the era George Harrison or Harry Nilsson
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Lupe Fiasco: Samurai
New album: A fluid, nimble, articulate playfully smooth ninth short, snappy LP by the American rapper and record producer with a title inspired by the late Amy Winehouse comparing rap battles to Samurai word weapons in a meta release about the joy of his genre
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Favourite LPs of 2023, Part 2.
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order …
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Corinne Bailey Rae: Black Rainbows
New album: A landmark of powerful storytelling and songwriting in this fourth album by the Leeds-born singer with songs inspired by immersion into a rich collection of art, books and artefacts about Black history organised by Theaster Gates at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago
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Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan
New album: The Grammy-nominated vocal harmonising duo of Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan from Eagle Rock, California, release a new collection of beautiful, bittersweet acoustic American folk of moving and vivid narratives
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Mark Lanegan
This week’s roundup includes a gritty but musical journey to accompany Mark Lanegan’s memoirs, a solo album the the Paramore singer, and Part Two of Moses Sumney’s extraordinary funk/jazz falsetto album
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Beck to the future?
This week’s roundup includes a cosmic return for Beck, a wonderfully droll posthumous release from Leonard Cohen, deeply powerful tragedy from Allison Moorer, and some quirkily catchy work from Japan’s WaqWaq Kingdom
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