I don’t know why I should be surprised that someone from the sun strewn West Coast of America should deliver one of the most authentic sounding folk records of the year so far. It isn’t like music belongs to any one place or people; it’s in the air for any who wish to hear it. King’s Daughters Home For Incurables is nothing less than a love letter to this damp green island, the folk music it has produced and the people who have made it. As a member of the Corner Laughers, Karla has had the perfect excuse to travel the Old World soaking up its traditions and culture, history and quirks, and whilst her main musical vehicle blends these vibes with a myriad of other flavours, here the fingerprint is more identifiable.
This is certainly the music of Western Europe, most probably England and perhaps emanating from a folk club in the dark back room of a pub. It is the sound of past eras of folk music as distilled through the 60’s folk revival, polished and evolved for the 21st century. Tracks such as The Lilac Line bubble over with the joyous pop vibe that comes so naturally to her, Mother of the Future is a distant echo of the primal scream and All Aboard is a simulated train ride using only a piano but mainly the songs fit with more expected folk territory.
These are the pathways wandered by everyone from Shirley Collins, who gets name checked and Martin Newell who appears here, and modern torchbearers Kate Rusby and Sarah McQuaid. That isn’t to say that this is in any way a pastiche or a retrospective glance, this is a homage, a celebration of the genre but one that moves it forward at just the right gentle pace. It is both familiar ground and fertile soil for new growth.
If The Corner Laughers are a high on life, mystical beach party, then this is a back garden musing, probably involving topics such as this year’s runner beans with a strong cup of tea and one eye on the weather. England hasn’t subdued her, it has seduced her and the result is music that is no less brilliant but with the pace and poise that fits the more reserved rural pulse beating at the heart of the songs
Borders are always interesting places for fusion and creativity. Cultures clash; community’s blend and wonderful new hybrids arise from the melting pot to take on a life of their own. South Texas is just such a place and if that is reflected in its music, there is no better mirror than Emilio Crixell and his musical gang.
Striping music back to its very essence is something that sounds easy but is rarely done well. The Civil Wars did it, though they never sounded like they were having a lot of fun doing so, 
Some things just remain part of modern history. The sleek lines of a Volkswagen Beetle, the iconic shape of a Coca-Cola bottle, the fit of the blue jean, the sound of the classic singer-songwriter. And that is exactly where Roddan comes from, a wonderful modern take on the sound that has echoed from San Francisco coffee shops to London folk clubs for more than a life time, the sound of James Taylor, Neil Young, John Martyn and a list of other revolutionary acoustic guitar-slingers.
Sometimes, after you have been bombarded with prefix riddled country, alt-this and post-that or even more meaningless concepts such as roots or Americana, it is nice to just listen to an album that isn’t afraid to just come straight out and use the country moniker. It was good enough for Merle Haggard so it should be good enough for anyone else. Richard Lynch has no problem with standing by just such a term.
We’ll just skip over the bands backstory for now, tales of alien abduction and cryogenic freezing all make for fun punk mythologies but let’s get down to the task at hand. What punk has always been the perfect vehicle for is making statements, political, social, artistic, the blunter and more direct the better, rather than worrying too much about how slickly it is packaged, musically speaking. To some it is just a case of shock and awful, to me it is the most succinct way of making a point, a sucker punch to the brain, a sledgehammer to the modern bland collective consciousness.
If the original version of Golden Leaves was a perfect blend of driven pop, infectious hooks and vocal eloquence, Stephania Sanquiz’s revisit takes the energy levels even higher and pushes a harder edge. Whilst staying faithful to the original and featuring Noemi Smorra who was one half of the vocal duo on the original English language version of the song, this time it is somehow bigger, edgier and takes the song down a more rock route.
They say that you can tell a lot about a person by the company that they keep. Similarly you can tell a lot about a musician by looking at who has accompanied them on their musical journey thus far. Making your way in any original and creative field is full of interesting and often unexpected twists, opportunities and collaborations and all this creates an imprint, a cross between a fingerprint, a musical DNA and a family tree. Examine that and you can learn a lot about an artist before you even meet them.
Well, that’s a new one on me. Hip-hop has always had something to say, at its most basic it is boastful and self-aggrandising, at it’s most clever it is observational and socially aware, but listening to Land of The Lost I have stumbled upon another incarnation. Hip-Hop as philosophy and philosophy on the grandest of scales. Not merely the street philosophy of the underdog but pure, unadulterated cosmic thinking and musing on our place in the universe. But then again anyone taking the moniker of Black Astronaut is probably not going to be bounded by the usual physical barricades.
Because we live in a world where everything needs to have an appropriate label and people have gone to war over the wrong sub-genre being attributed to a particular artist or album, I feel the need to make an important distinction when describing Phil Wilson’s latest e.p. Some might describe it as dream-pop, but I would rather opt for the term dreamy-pop, for whilst it does wander the same hazy and sonorous pathways of the former, it is built on a confident and robust pop structure, beats are solid, guitar lines chime or soar rather than blur and fuzz and the vocals walk the perfect line between dreamscape and drama.
