Thomas Blake

A Thousand Pokes is the most potent expression of Stick in the Wheel’s yet. Their songs ring with the joy of specificity and detail, the ferocious joy of marginalised voices making themselves heard, the angry joy of people reclaiming their heritage.

The strength of Mairearad Green & Rachel Newton’s distinctive boundary-pushing “Anna Bhàn” doesn’t lie in nostalgia…it is history in the very living sense of the word, ripe and ardent, and not afraid to look forward.

On More Break-Up Songs, Darren Hayman’s ‘New Starts’ debut, he weaves a personal mythology of love and loneliness…the results are sometimes humorous, sometimes tear-jerking, and never less than entertaining.

On The Neon Gate, Nap Eyes songs drink deep at the wells of philosophy and literature…They seem to create a different niche for themselves with every new album; long may it continue.

Dance of Love feels like it could turn out to be Tucker Zimmerman’s Basement Tapes. Everything about it is fresh and spontaneous, music made on its own terms but with a spirit of collaborative generosity.

From uncanny atmospherics to heartfelt emotion, The Declining Winter’s ‘Last April’ offers the perfect example of how the combination of sadness, hope and love can be captured in music.

Return to Kielderside is, among other things, a document of what has happened between that first Kathryn Tickell release and the present day-It’s like a long-exposure photograph of a highly impressive career in constant evolution.

Many political advertising campaigns fall short because they treat voter behavior as if it follows a predictable formula, but voter behavior is anything but predictable.. From Campaign US

Trust Fund’s “Has It Been A While?” drifts by, a thirty-five-minute reverie, gauzy and dreamy and illuminated from within…Jones’ biggest influence here is Nick Drake, and it shows.

The latest Ceremonial Counties release from Folklore Tapes features Benjamin D Duvall (Ex-Easter Island Head) and Sam McLoughlin.