Back catalogue: Folk/Americana

Review: "A document created in the shadow of incredible darkness. One from which the creator hadn't planned on escaping and still doesn't. Hence the title of the album. It is the result of an illness that I've battled my whole life. It isn't something that the world has done to me. It's the world I live in, and it's no one's fault."
So says Brian Christinzio, AKA BC Camplight, of his sixth album. As ever, it's a musical masterpiece packing dense layers of instrumental experimentation and theses-worthy lyrical poignance. An artist who has never played by the musical rules, fans of strong juxtapositions will again be in there element, with a tracklist that spans grunge-y garage rock, twisted barroom journeyman stuff, theatrical guitar pop, and plenty more. But the sounds themselves are only one half the genius. When it comes to arrangements, things are as playful as they are innovative, keeping listeners guessing as to how structures will pan out.

Review: It's almost unfathomable more people haven't heard of Beau. Without question one to the finest living (recording) musicians on the face of the planet, the guitar master has been putting albums out since (drum roll) 1969, with his most recent, The Methadone of Our Time, arriving in 2021. The Leeds-born folk and folktronica legend's work rate is so high, in fact, that he regularly delivers more than one LP in a year, with 2013 among the bumper calendars in which he managed to bestow no less than six full-length-ers on fans.

Beau takes us right back to where it all began. Well, almost. Recorded in 1969, and hitting shelves just after his debut 1917 Revolution, it has aged fantastically well, much like the artist himself. A spellbinding showcase of his twelve-string guitar playing, it may have been very much of its time, but this is one few could argue fails on the timelessness test.

Review: Hadsel is a first full length record since Beirut dropped their 2019 work Gallipoli. It is the first on Zach Condon's own Pompeii Records label and was recorded on the Norwegian album from which it takes its name. Condon had to cancel a tour in 2019 to focus on getting well after a breakdown and used the process to recover after growing issues around self doubt. The beautiful songs reflect the vulnerability of the artists with gorgeous melodies and layers of subtly rousing chords, supple rhythms and great contrast between light and dark.

Review: Hadsel, Zach Condon AKA Beirut's first album in four years, is named in honour of the place in which much of it was recorded, a remote Norwegian island that the neo-folk artist stayed in back in 2019. The tranquillity of his surroundings, as well as access to limited instruments (a lo-fi drum machine, a church organ, a basic synthesiser and his trusty acoustic guitar, is reflected in the beauty and slow-burn nature of the music on show, which naturally pushes Condon's distinctive, emotionally charged vocals to the fore and tends towards the atmospheric and musically opaque. The results are genuinely beguiling, with our picks of a very strong bunch including 'The Tern', where Condon's voice sails above sustained organ chords, a tribal-tinged rhythm track, and life-affirming vocal harmonies, and the brass-enhanced warmth of 'So Many Plans'.

Review: Diane Birch returns with that spellbinding voice - a transportive powerhouse packing a timeless quality that resonates through her music. The American recording world doing what it has always done so well, creating huge, heartbreaking, hopeful, and captivating mini operas disguised as pop. Or, if you want to get technical here: soft rock, country, folk, r&b and soul. OK, so there are elements of funk and jazz, too, and the result is a heady brew that's pretty inescapable. Harking back to the balladry heydays, with shades of Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, and Carly Simon, to name but a few - in delivery and performance, if not necessarily tone - no matter where you're listening from it's going to be hard to forget this one.

Review: Lo Borges arrived in 1972 as the debut solo album for Brazilian songwriter Lo Borges. He was recording Clube da Esquina with the legendary Milton Nascimento and Beto Guedes in the same year and there are plenty of shades of that alaric here. It's a record with lush texture and lots of superbly intricate guitar playing that brings the heat and transports you to a scorched earth world in South America. The vocal arrangements are lush, too, with lots of confounding instrumentals and clever progressions that you will enjoy trying to unpick. Add in melodic brass and jazzy organs and you have a real pearler.

Review: It was probably easy to come up with a catchier title for this collection of treasured recordings from one of the 20th Century's greatest lost talents. But like everything Buckley and music, ease isn't really part of the story, that is unless you're referencing the pure bliss of listening to this legend's voice, which is as easy on the ear as you could ask for.

Comprising tracks that were originally captured for broadcast, they reveal the very essence of what Buckley was about. Heartfelt, open-veined songs that grasp the human condition in astute swoops, by this point in his career the folk and Americana signatures had merged with jazz and abstract elements, presenting an image of a restless artist determined to keep exploring. It's been said before, but we will reiterate; had it not been for the tragic overdose a year after the OGWT recording featured here, we can only imagine where his oeuvre would have ended up.

Review: Following the amazing success story of Vashti Bunyan's recent re-emergence as an artist after an exile of over 30 years, we are proud and excited to release "Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind", a comprehensive compilation of early recordings dating from the period prior to Vashti's classic "Just another Diamond Day" album which was originally released 1970. Titled after Vashti's (Jagger/Richards-penned) debut single which opens the compilation, this double-album represents an attempt to both open out and draw a line under the past, and also to try to set the record straight about the disparity between how Vashti viewed (and still views) herself against the way she has been popularly perceived. Widely construed as a folk singer - a tag she fundamentally disagrees with - these recordings instead reveal Vashti as a pop singer, however 'fragile' and unique. A complete collection of Vashti's existing early recordings, the album is divided across two discs and features 25 tracks - mostly rescued from a number of old acetates and quarter-inch tapes Vashti's brother John had found in his attic a few years ago.

Review: It's October 2020 and two Bills decide to do a cover version of the 1967 Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) protest track 'Blackness of the Night'. A fitting choice given at the time the world was stuck in a strange recurring nightmare, defined by confusion, isolation, and pessimism, the track was not only appropriate, it was wonderfully re-read by the artists bringing it into the present day.

And they didn't stop there. Soon, there were more new versions of old greats coming from the pair, and the smart money was always on an album arriving at some point in the future. Well, that point is now, and finally we have it. Better yet, this is every bit as lovely as we could have hoped. Combining elements of pop, folk, blues, country, gospel, and rock, it's accomplished, sophisticated, and hugely enjoyable.