Category: Folk
The Unthanks: Mount the Air
Two years in the making, the newly-released album by British contemporary folk band The Unthanks is a majestic collection. If all the lyrics are still curated from old poetry and song collections, learnt from other singers or newly written in the mode of traditional ballads,…
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset: The Bairns
A song only becomes a folk song when people start singing it. Rachel Unthank The Unthanks are an English folk band from Newcastle formed in 2004. Originally an all-female quartet, Rachel and Becky Unthank with Niopha Keegan (violin & voice) and Belinda O’Hooley (piano & voice) recorded…
Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita: Clychau Dibon
The pairing of a European classical pedal harp with an African 21-string kora sounds very unusual at first sight, but the rare duo recording of Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita is a truly remarkable feat. The association of the two…
Eithne Ní Uallacháin: Bilingua
Recorded more than 15 years ago but only released at the end of 2014 on the Gael Linn record label, “Bilingua” is an exquisite treasury of old verses and new songs performed by Irish traditional musician Eithne Ní Uallacháin (1957 – 1999), one of the true enchanting…
Mark Lanegan Band: Phantom Radio
Now aged 50, American alt-rock singer songwriter Mark Lanegan is an extremely prolific recording artist and attempting to frame his musical output in terms of style relating to a particular period in his discography would inevitably lead to over simplification. All his various musical influences seem…
Mark Lanegan: Flatlands
Standing apart in Mark Lanegan’s discography and released between two recordings whose sound is more traditionally associated with the alt-rock singer songwriter, Imitations (2013) is a collection of covers, his second after I’ll Take Care of You (1999). When I was a kid in the…
9Bach: Tincian
From North Wales, 9Bach is a contemporary folk band formed in 2005 by singer-songwriter Lisa Jên and guitar player Martin Hoyland. Following up on a first self-titled collection of traditional folk songs in 2009, always singing in the Welsh language and featuring seven new compositions,…
Birds on a Wire
Birds on a Wire is an enchanting voice and cello duo formed by French-American singer Rosemary Standley (with multinational France-based alt-folk band Moriarty) and young Brazilian singer, songwriter and cellist Dominique Pinto aka Dom la Nena. Initiated by Rosemary Standley in 2011 as “Rosemary’s Songbook”, the…