Folk
Track: Romanie’s shining ‘Stranger in my Skin’ is a reflective and contemplative ode to uncertainty and isolation, and comes off her newly announced EP ‘Little Big Steps’ due out on 13 August 2021.
Originally from Belgium, Romanie relocated to Melbourne a few years ago and found herself in the midst of the COVID pandemic and a number of lockdowns: events that can create anxiety and uncertainty for locals, feelings that can only be even more exaggerated if you are far from home. This bleeds into Roanie’s new single, …
PREMIERE: Field Guide wants to ‘Make Peace With That’, shares loved-up new song ‘Me & You’
Sometimes you uproot your life right before a global pandemic, which is to say that it was incredibly unfortunate timing for Canadian Dylan MacDonald when he did that early last year, moving to Toronto where it rapidly became clear that his only option was to focus on writing music – it was a fraught but …
Premiere: Aphra unveils an effervescent and buoyant track ‘Tide In Tide Out’ in advance of EP ‘Sticky Toffee Pudding’
We are very pleased to premiere the new track ‘Tide In Tide Out’ from Aphra. ‘Tide In Tide Out’ is a bright and effervescent track that has a folkish tinge and an aquatic, seaside feel about it – lapping waves and seagulls sounds give way to a bright pace and a muscular pop melody. The …
PREMIERE: Moira Smiley shares captivating collaborative performance video of ‘Silverlake’
In February, the Vermont-based Moira Smiley released her most recent album In Our Voices, her attempt to reconnect with the world of a capella singing from which she came – regularly performing with VOCO, their plans for a tour of the US in early 2020 were scuppered for obvious reasons. Unable to perform live for …
Album review: Alasdair Roberts og Völvur – ‘The Old Fabled River’: Scots-Norwegian sextet debut a record of correspondences, life cycles and exploratory depth
HE’S GRACED us with a very Northern European and delicious take on introspective folk since that trio of lovely albums, The Rye Bears A Poison, Daylight Saving and The Night Is Advancing as Appendix Out, beginning back in ’97; and it should come as no surprise that a man whose music arguably sounds best with …
Album Review: Tunnel Traffic’s elegiac ‘Take my Power’ is a shimmering and immersive work of art
Adam Hachey is a brilliant and underappreciated song writer whose talent has been lauded by Backseat Mafia since almost our inception when he emerged with the band Meesh, creating a genre of what he termed anti-folk. His songwriting is in fact folkish, but with an indie pop sensibility and a more layered and rich approach. …
Track: Fink’s ‘Sort of Revolution’ is true to its word.
Fink is the kind of artist that makes you nostalgic for bygone times, old loves and the beauty of youth. He’s the artist that inspired many, following his own singer-songwriter journey that truly is adaptable to the times. He has released a beauty of a song ‘ Sort of Revolution’ ahead of his upcoming Album “IIUII” ( …
Album review: Craig Fortnam – ‘Ark’: North Sea Radio man gathers his world in a prog-pastoral-folk craft of intricacy and thoughtfulness
ARCH GARRISON, whose lovely odyssey of modern Wessex psych-pastoralism The Bitter Lay we loved for all its exploration of thorny byways last year; a half-dozen or so long-playing outings in the North Sea Radio Orchestra; even back before the century’s turn, a solitary album with Shrubbies. In all these incarnations we’ve enjoyed and explored the …
Album review: Cameron Knowler – ‘Places Of Consequence’: a new music as old as the hills, immersive and atmospheric
TEXAN solo guitar practitioner and melodicist Cameron Knowler – whose lovely, exploratory album with Eli Winter, Anticipation, we fully embraced in early March – is unveiling his very first solo album with American Dreams this coming week. A lifelong Westerner and recent Los Angeles transplant, Knowler spent his childhood in Yuma, Arizona and Houston, Texas, …
Album Review: An Early Bird’s beautiful album ‘Diviner’ is a sparkling, romantic journey into the imagination
Milano-based troubadour Stefano De Stefano has been keenly admired by Backseat Mafia since our very birth when we lauded his band Pipers back in 2013 and then his solo stuff under the name An Early Bird. Stefano has shown dedication and passion for his craft throughout the years we have known him: beautifully composed and …