Category: Folk
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The Croutons: No Nonsense Monkey Business
The Croutons are Bill Ollier from Goostrey and Chris Wood from Congleton, who met in 2005 and so have been writing and playing together for a decade. We imagine the songs tell the story of the band: early hopes of becoming the new Simon and Garfunkel abandoned when they realise it’s more fun to play…
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Dave Dove and Amy Wakefield: The Players
This opens with You Ask Me, sounding like a Whitest Boy Alive song, with clean acoustic guitar and double bass, before the vocals come in; it’s clear we’re in home-made territory though in a good way — we once returned from Shetland with a boxful of CDs from local musicians sounding like this. It’s endearing…
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John McCusker: Hello, Goodbye
Charming is the word for this solo album from fiddle player McCusker: he’s celebrating 25 years as a professional musician but as he joined the Battlefield Band when he was still a nipper (well 17) he’s still a comparative stripling. As well as the Battlefield Band, he’s played and produced with Kate Rusby and Heidi…
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Altan: Widening Gyre
Altan are one of Ireland’s longest lasting bands, 35 years and counting, and the longest running line-up of founding members in Irish music. We confess never having heard of them. (We have heard of equally long-lasting Irish band Aslan, the band random name generator obviously getting stuck at “A” in 1980s Ireland). Altan specialise in…
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Blair Dunlop: Gilded
We reviewed Dunlop’s second album House of Jacks and remember thinking he was a British Neil Young, with his intelligent songs and mix of the folk and the rock; the lack of guitar solos possibly suggests he’s more of British Jackson Browne but still: he’s good and several cuts above many “folk” artists out there.…
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Graham Nash: This Path Tonight
With so many rock legends boarding the great tour bus in the sky, the surviving performers can be forgiven existential thoughts. This new offering from the former Hollies/CSNY man opens with the line “Where are we going” and goes on: “I may not know where I’m going/But I’m on this path tonight”. This slightly…
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Lucius: Good Grief
Lucius — Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe — have toured/worked with the likes of Roger Waters, Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy/Wilco and David Byrne, so they’re good singers and know their stuff. We’ve found that albums by backing singers can be hit and miss — standing behind a talented songwriter for 100 gigs doesn’t mean some…
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Steven James Adams: Old Magick
One of the Review Corner’s favourite band stories concerns Steven James Adams’s former group, The Broken Family Band, back when he was merely Steven J Adams. All the band members had good jobs, so band money was band money only. One night while on tour, they went out for a meal and blew the entire…
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Sami Junnonen: The Chant Enchanted
We’ve been enjoying this album by flautist Sami Junnonen, though it’s hard to describe. It’s an album of flute music by a Finn (he was born in 1977 in Tampere) but at various places sounds English (Vaughan Williams) and European (Bach/Mozart/chamber music) and at other times exotic — one featured composer is Michio Miyagi, an…
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