Review Corner

Category: Folk

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    Andrew Combs: Canyons Of My Mind

    You could call this country — he’s a Texan based in Nashville — but much of the music leans towards the classic ballady pop of the likes of James Taylor, or the folk of Gordon Lightfoot, with “proper” country only cropping up in a couple of tracks. The classic/old-fashioned nature of his approach continues in…

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    Laura Marling: Semper Femina

    We’ve missed a couple of Marling albums; she was always good but if this new album isn’t her best, we must have missed some crackers. The music is slickly delivered but intimate, and slightly downbeat. It takes in several genres; some parts are country, some folk, some jazz, a mix of English folk and 60s…

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    Hackney Colliery Band: Live

    Whenever we’re down in the dumps in the Review Corner, we often play Rock With the Hot 8, by The Hot 8 Brass Band, a New Orleans outfit that blend hip-hop, jazz and funk. It’s not brass as you might expect if you’re a fan of Foden’s Band, and nor are there eight of them,…

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    Vladimir and Anton: Live

    Slovakian brothers Vladimir and Anton Jablokov are ace violin players who’ve graduated from busking in Ireland, where they now live, to recording contracts. They take familiar pieces and re-do them with lots of energy and fancy playing. We wondered for a moment who’d buy this, before remembering André Rieu and the world-wide following he has.…

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    Nadine Khouri: The Salted Air

    Khouri is a British-Lebanese musician and songwriter based in London, whose work is described by the Press release as “music born of perennial outsider status”. The PR cites a four-star Mojo review (“dark, possessed beauty”) and a five-star Radio Two review (“fascinating musical tapestry”). We’d give it three stars (“all a bit the same, really,…

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    Leif Vollebekk: Twin Solitude

    Vollebekk is a Montreal singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is/was a fan of Nick Drake. We’d also guess he’s a big fan of David Gray, whose White Ladder this sounds very much like. For older readers, Gray was a singer-songwriter whose fourth album White Ladder was massive, partly helped by a memorable televised performance at…

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    Raphael Doyle: Closer

      Most albums get compared with other albums or bands; this one is a book, Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man. That’s the story of his life in Auschwitz and its first chapter describes how his (and by extension) the reader’s humanity can be completely taken away if someone’s a big enough bastard. It’s…

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    Neil Young: Peace Trail

    We read a bad review of this and feared it would be like some of his recent releases — his work rate is admirable while his quality control is not — but it’s very good. It’s not up there with his best but it’s listenable and more casual fans of Young will find much to…

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    Bob Webb: Tree Of Life, A Thirty-Year Anthology

    The music industry (like books) is propped up by massive-selling stars — one Adele will keep an entire company in profit. (Beggars Group saw total operating profits jump 229.2% to £16.68m in 2015, courtesy of Adele’s 25, while 2011, when Adele’s 21 was released, saw the firm turn over £86.2m in revenue, with an operating…

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    Phish: Farmhouse, Junta, Billy Breathes

    In a week where we’re low on new releases, we thought we’d review some old albums from a band you’ve possibly never heard of — American jam-band Phish. Anyone who follows US culture will have come across Phish, who are loved in the States but largely unknown over here. We asked A&A Music, and its…