alt.folk
TRACK: Renée Reed – ‘Où est la fée’: a mystical tale from the Louisiana backwoods
HAILING from Lafayette, Louisiana, Renée Reed has followed up her excellent first single, “Fast One”, with a French language track, “Où est la fée” today. It’s the first song she’s released in French, reflecting her roots in the culture of her home state; and we’re told it’s one of two such on her self-titled debut album, out next month …
ALBUM REVIEW: Indigo Sparke – ‘echo’: a jaw-dropping country-folk debut
You can hear Indigo’s very essence shot right through echo. It’s never less, at any point, than extremely lovely; at many points its genuinely bloody stunning. You know when someone has that alchemical it, and boy: Indigo incontrovertibly does.
It’s not an album to have on in the background, because it’s far too arresting and enveloping, commanding. She’s royalty in waiting on the leftfield folk scene. Astonishing; buy
TRACK: Pictish Trail – ‘Dream Wall’: hushed loveliness from the dream state
JOHNNY LYNCH who, besides running the dependably excellent Lost Map Records (which, being based, for most of us, up there on the Hebridean island of Eigg, isn’t lost from the map but rather merely quite close to the edge of it) fashions hushed musical atmospheres wearing his Pictish Trail hat, has got a new EP …
SEE: M. Ward drops a video for ‘Violets And Furs’ from his Billie Holiday covers set
PORTLAND’S muchly the finest, M. Ward, has just released a video for the bloody beautiful “Violets For Your Furs”, his whisper-swoonsome take on a Billie Holiday song from his recent full album of covers of the great Lady Day, Think Of Spring. “Violets For Your Furs” is a strumalong sway, taking the original to the fireside, simplicity …
SEE: Sophie Morgan – ‘Always’: a sweet song for the lonely
A SOLE trumpeter plays a lonely air on the riverside terrace, and is joined by a dashingly besuited fellow, stage left, maybe a little bit Gatsby; we glimpse Sophie in her party frock, sitting, where she joined by the dashing young buck – but only momentarily, as she steps away and into song. They dance …
SEE: Davey Woodward & The Winter Orphans – ‘Bad Day’ cornering a brilliantly thrashy alt.pop nugget
FORMER Brilliant Corners singer Davey Woodward is fashioning rather lovely, lo-fi, alt.folk indiepop these days, along with The Winter Orphans – a quintet rescued from the chill winds atop Spaniorum Hill to help him in his lifelong pursuit of low-slung, perfectly drawled, South West pop. They’ve just dropped the video for “Bad Day” – plenty …
TRACK: Sara Wolff – ‘Bad Thoughts Compilation’ – welcome to Sara’s homespun folk-pop world
SHE LEFT the big, big vistas of her native Bergen, Norway, and relocated to Liverpool in order to study; found she really liked it by the Mersey, decided to stick around, and soon found that songs were flowing. It’s been quite the journey from university to rising alt.folk talent for Sara Wolff, whose duvet-day summation …
PREMIERE: Fish and Scale – ‘You Can Call Me LOVE’: swoon for a folk troubadour’s embrace
HAILING from Franconia, in southern Germany, Roland Wälzlein is on a mission to bring us glowing, stirring folk as Fish and Scales – and we’re premiering his first, rather groovy and lovely, single of the year, “You Can Call Me LOVE” here today at Backseat Mafia. As a child of 6, he underwent – and …
SEE: Indigo Sparke – ‘Everything Everything’: astonishing spectral folk
IF MARISSA NADLER, Aldous Harding, Joanna Newsom, Vashti Bunyan light up your world with otherworldly folk fire – and if they don’t, then maybe we can’t be friends after all – then you really need to take a seat right this minute, and be astonished by Australian folk artist Indigo Sparke, who’s recently inked on …
TRACKS: Clémentine March – ‘Into The Distance’/’Éternité’
AN ECLECTIC, alt.folk(ish) singer-songwriter with a lovely, raggedy edge to her song fashioning, French-born but London based Clémentine March is close to a perfect match for Johnny Lynch’s Lost Map imprint, homespun and vital, operating from the fastnesses of the Inner Hebridean island of Eigg (current pop: 47). She debuted for Lost Map last year …