Category: Folk
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Ben Bedford: The Hermit’s Spyglass
This album tells a day in the life of Ben and Darwin the Cat in a farmhouse (“The Hermitage”), a proper little house on the prairie (Illinois). Some of the tracks are short — opener Morning Rise is only 1:20), and he gulps Morning Coffee in the same time. Some are instrumental, such as The…
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Danny Schmidt: Standard Deviation
We thought Standard Deviation was a song about two girls falling in love over a shared fondness for physics but the release notes say it is a “romance set in the multi-dimensional realm of theoretical physics”. Schmidt goes on to say that it “touches on the pushback” that smart women face in traditionally male-dominated arenas,…
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Ward and Parker: One
Ward, or it could be Parker, was in Nizlopi, who had a massive hit with the JCB Song (don’t play it, you’ll never get it out of your head). The general tenor of that was a wise but homely narrator who knows what life’s about, doing the right thing. There’s the same kind of air…
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Dave Fidler: Songs From Aurora
This fine new album from Dave Fidler — he plays the guitar — highlights the difference between professional musicians and the more amateur. Fidler, who has toured with John Bramwell from I Am Kloot, wrote and recorded this album while touring the festival circuit with his family in his caravan, Aurora — hence the…
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Damien Jurado: In The Shape of a Storm
“There’s nothing left to hide” Jurado sings (sings? more like mutters or whispers) during Lincoln, the opener of this new album, and it could be a comment on this stripped down offering. All that’s here is the guitar, Jurado’s voice and the songs. It was recorded in two hours one afternoon; preceded, one assumes, by…
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Fontaines DC: Dogrel
We read some profiles from Ireland before listening to this Dublin band; the Irish Press loves them and hails them as the next global hit for the city. This is partly because the band is so Dublin — “Dublin in the rain is mine,” the vocals bellow within seconds of the opening song Big (as…
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Dallahan: Smallworld
This is a tasty folk / roots album. The opener is an instrumental, Aye Chiki, which uses instrumentation typical of any folk band but — as the name might suggest — with an Eastern flavour. The beat (to our ears) is Tartar, and reminiscent of some of the music we collected following a recent trip…
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Richard Sutton: Paper Plane
There are people who like non-league football for its grassroots nature, people doing something for the love of it, and the same is true in music: this CD is one for people who love honest, heart-on-its-sleeve folk/pop. Sutton is a guy who plays guitar (possibly for a living, he seems to play regularly at a…
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Tim Fredericks: Singer Songwriter
This album, which we guess is a labour of love (they’re giving it away) is from a band that if not local is at least regional: members are from Crewe, Macc, Stoke and Manchester. The tracks on this were recorded between 2015-19, so we guess when money was spare. The opener is a full band…
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Trapper Schoepp: Primetime Illusion
Schoepp is one of those artistes who sound like they’re going to be big, just because they’re so good. We thought it was a band but Trapper Schoepp is a real name of just one person, and Primetime Illusion is his third album. He writes songs about life, but in the same way as Squeeze…
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