“Porchlight” is Two Runner’s first album with Paige Anderson as sole frontperson. Its twelve songs encompass transition, loss and journeys both literal and personal. Quality story songs are matched by the beautiful yearning of more intimate numbers — a fine record from a performer with burgeoning talent and an even more promising future.

“Donn Dubh” is a challenging and exhilarating reimagining of Scots Gaelic traditions by two fearless musical cosmonauts at the top of their game. Arun Sood and Angeline Morrison’s collaborative debut calls to mind Eno and Byrne’s “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” — samples, distortion and elegiac piano channelling folk’s ancient past while forecasting its glittering future.

Jon Wilks releases his rendition of “Geordie” on September 4th, marking fifty years of Martin Carthy’s “Crown of Horn.” Carthy’s version was so definitive that recording his own “always felt like turning up to a house that was already lived in.” The Songs of Martin Carthy tour changed that — two semitones up, with a new jaunt and swing.

Allison de Groot and Rich Ruth have today shared their second single, ‘Distance From Then’. With its earthy birdsong opening and unadorned banjo and violin, Ruth soon creates a whole world around it. As Allison says, “Like so much of the music on this album, our two very different musical worlds sent the tracks in unexpected directions.”

Spell Songs’ third studio album, In Thin Air, is a creative reaction to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s The Book of Birds. Fifteen songs deal with different aspects of avian life, from nest-building to migration, building up a noticeable narrative thrust. Again and again, this album cleverly conflates the lives of birds with human experience. It is an album in constant fluttering movement, one that soars and sings.

Watch the video for “Green Grow the Laurels”, Josienne Clarke’s stark new rendering of the traditional song, directed by Alec Bowman_Clarke. The single accompanies the announcement of “Regenerene MMXXVI”, a 12-track album that reveals her recent standalone singles are part of a larger return to the traditional material that first shaped her career.

Combining stop-motion animation made from leaves, seeds, and flowers with live footage, Mamas Broke share the video for ‘Wildflowers’, a stunningly beautiful, lyrically enigmatic ballad with a deceptively simple acoustic guitar at its heart. It’s taken from their new album, Reunion, out today on Free Dirt Records/Forward Music Group.

On “Black Duck with Elena Setién,” Chicago’s experimental trio team up with Spanish-Basque singer and multi-instrumentalist Elena Setién, recording after just a few hours of rehearsal to capture the direct energy of their live shows. The music shifts from tightly composed to improvised — exciting, adventurous, and full of character. A joy to listen to.

Chicago trio Bitchin Bajas, featuring Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan, share a live video for “Ajami”, filmed at their Los Angeles Lodge Room show on miniDV tape by Shambling History. The track is from their new EP Isle Peaks, out today on Drag City. They’ve also announced a new show at Chicago’s smartbar, adding to an already packed autumn of both US and EU/UK dates.

Captured live over a Valentine’s Day weekend in Los Angeles, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “Ghosts of American Psychonauts” finds familiar songs dismantled and rearranged by an expanded band. The great trapeze artist of the human experience has eviscerated and recapitulated his own songbook once more — a compelling addition to an ongoing project of self-actualisation.

Artist of the Month

Spell Songs – In Thin Air

On Heavy Rotation

Bonnie "Prince" Billy – Ghosts of American Psychonauts
Alex Dupree – Talking to the Dog
Elanor Moss – The Knife, The Needle
Hana Stretton – Tiarn
Rowena Wise – Bad Things Feel Good*
Blake Hornsby – Brugmansia
Nora Stanley – Glass
The Powers Ensemble – Kindling

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