Category: Folk
-
Neil Young: Roxy Tonight’s The Night Live
This is a live release whose backstory is perhaps as interesting as the actual album. It was originally released as a record store day package, so more of a treat than essential listening, good as it is. The 1973 gig, the inaugural show at the Roxy in LA, was the first public performance of the…
-
Aidan O’Rourke: 365 Volume One
Top marks for O’Rourke for inventiveness; he wrote a tune a day for a year, hence the title. The inspiration was James Robertson’s book 365, itself remarkable: a collection of 365 short stories, each with 365 words. O’Rourke is recording all 365 — 22 down, 343 to go after this — but only releasing the…
-
Neil Young + Promise of the Real: Paradox
For parts of this movie soundtrack you think, “If Heineken did soundtracks…”; other parts are apparently men eating crisps in a field and playing guitar, so less so. Paradox is a film directed by Neil’s other half, Daryl Hannah. Its plot: Sometime in the future past, the “Man in the Black Hat” (Young), the “Particle…
-
Courtney Marie Andrews: May Your Kindness Remain
Her previous albums have been noteworthy simply because she has a nice voice, and sometimes that’s all you need. This new one is deeper and slower, and while it takes more time to get used to — it’s not pop — it’s ultimately better. In a coincidental echo of the Basil Athanasiadis album (see this…
-
Fatoumata Diawara: Fenfo Something To Say
We were never not going to like this: Diawara played with/on AfroCubism (the original idea of the Bueno Vista Social Club album) and with Benin’s Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou — two of our most-played world albums — as well as Herbie Hancock, and she combines the roots sound of the more traditional bands with…
-
The Handsome Family: Through The Trees
This re-issue — it’s 20 years since The Handsome Family first released it — is bloody marvellous. Its basic sound could be 100 years old, a couple of (rather sinister) folks with beards and overalls making country music on a porch, but it’s got a modern feel and the lyrics are heartfelt; in fact, that’s…
-
Finbar Furey: Don’t Stop This Now
If you’re into folk and associated genres, this is an album you must buy. Finbar Furey is an Irish legend, part of the Fureys. He toured and played hard, and life took its toll in 2013, when he had a near-fatal heart attack. He’s over it now (“A fella asked me if I had an…
-
Will Varley: Spirit of Minnie
Previous releases — this is his fifth studio album — have been just Varley and guitar; powerful songs maybe (try Something Is Breaking from Kingsdown Sundown) but still acoustic. This new album has a full band and sees him up his game considerably: comparisons with the likes of Marc Cohn or even The Boss in…
-
Don McLean: Botanical Gardens
Lyrically this is for those who think political correctness has gone mad, and the loss of the days when a man could walk round openly staring at pretty girls in dresses is to be lamented. The opener Botanical Gardens is, reduced to its essentials, about a man who ain’t getting any eying up girls in…
-
Molly Tuttle: Rise
First the predictable joke: the opener is Good Enough but this mini-album is more than good enough. It’s marvellous. Though she plays bluegrass it doesn’t, on the surface, sound it. Bluegrass, the genre of American roots music that emerged from Appalachia but is shaped by Irish, Scottish and English traditional music, is often typified by…
Review Corner 