Folk Music
Ibi Keita
My first listen to Iron & Wine was only last year, when iconic Midwest Emo band American Football released a cover album of their now classic 1999 self-titled album. Keen to hear all of my favourite tracks reincarnated by some seemingly random, and unknown artists, I woke up on its release date to find that their most popular song “Never Meant” was covered by Samuel Beam, aka Iron & Wine. The song is literally a masterpiece, both its original and Beam’s fantastic cover, a triumph in stretching and kneading the track into something new and beautifully haunting.Hen's Teeth is Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The Weaving is an Ango-Irish trio of accordion, voice, fiddle and piano. The voice belongs to Méabh Begley, from Kerry’s prominent musical family – she sings one of her father Séamus Begley’s songs, “Dán Lae Breithe”, further in this superb debut set of 12 songs and tunes. Cáit Ní Riain from Tipperary is on piano, and the fiddle player is Leeds-born Owen Spafford, of the acclaimed British folk-ambient duo Spafford Campbell, whose second album, Tomorrow Held, on Real World, was my album of the year in 2025.Owen Spafford describes Warp and Weft (Dlúth & Inneach) as “a cultural Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Well, this is a surprise. Not so much that the Sunderland band should do a Christmas album, mind. Despite their raw and spiky hardcore framework, which channelled heavyweights like Gang Of Four and Fugazi, they were always capable of being gentle, dreamlike, flirting with but never tipping over into the whimsical, as on their huge breakthrough cover of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love”. And maybe even more relevantly, their harmony singing bordered on the choral from the start, something made explicit on their a capella reworking folk songs and their own work on their 2012 Rant album.No, it’s not Read more ...
Liz Thomson
On a rainswept Monday, “Miss American Idol 1956”, as Judy Collins likes to introduce herself these days, drew a near-capacity crowd to the Union Chapel, Islington, for an intimate concert that felt at times as if it were in a large living room. She’s 86 now, wearing a pixie cut instead of her once-signature rock-star mane, but the eyes that so entranced Stephen Stills are no less blue and she’s still doing what she's done so gloriously for some 65 years. It was, she reflected, 1965 when she made her British debut, with Tom Paxton, and she’s been a regular visitor ever since. In the Read more ...