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Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On
New album: Minimalistic, pithy, nostalgically twangy, wistful, undersyated indie-folk-pop by the Chicago/New York trio of Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein, and Gigi Reece in this second LP with a refreshing sound produced by Cate Le Bon
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Richard Dawson: End of the Middle
New album: Extraordinary songs about ordinary lives by the wonderful Newcastle alternative folk singer-songwriter – poetic, strikingly detailed, touching, warm, gently humorous, melancholy, original and gorgeously profound, bringing beauty to banality, private tragedies and small joys
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Nadia Reid: Enter Now Brightness
New album: Warm, tender, thoughtfully profound, intelligent, finely crafted indie-folk with Laurel Canyon-era and Americana elements by the now Manchester-based New Zealand singer-songwriter on themes of hemes of change, motherhood, home, and heartbreak
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Helen Ganya: Share Your Care
New album: The Brighton-based Scottish-Thai singer-songwriter’s new LP is inspired by the death of her grandmother in 2021, exploring and celebrating her east-Asian heritage in a gorgeously warm, eclectic collection that includes sounds of the Thai dulcimer.
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Bonnie "Prince" Billy: The Purple Bird
New album: A mischievously droll, but also tender, gently moving new release by Kentucky’s seasoned singer-songwriter Will Oldham, this time very much in Nashville-flavoured country mode, with numbers about community, relationships and the state of the nation, joined by producer and old friend David “ Ferg” Ferguson
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Victoria Canal: Slowly, It Dawns
New album: A striking, eclectic debut LP by the Spanish-American singer-songwriter, who, already with two Ivor Novello awards for songwriting, mixes mainstream pop with a variety of other styles, from close-mic Billie Eilish to drum’n’bass, intimate folk to Cuban rhythms
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Tunng: Love You All Over Again. Cover art: Lilias Buchanan
New album: A beautiful, celebratory album of the pioneering British ‘folktronica’ band’s 20 years of music, with an eighth LP of brand new songs fully capturing their distinctive, delicate, crisply poetic, agile style with a delicious feeling of circularity.
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Anna B Savage: You & i are Earth
New album: This third album of exquisite folk by the English singer-songwriter is a beautiful love letter to Ireland as a spiritual home as well as her Irish partner, flowing with delicious images, tenderness and intelligence
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Cameron Winter: Heavy Metal
New album: Released last month, the Geese frontman’s solo LP is nothing like its title in genre, but a brilliantly eccentric, eclectic, inventive, surreal mosaic of dream-like DIY oddness – blues, folk, pop and psych rolled up in droll humour, existential dread and creative patchwork streams of the sub-conscious and non-sequitur
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Jasmine 4.t - You Are The Morning
New album: An outstanding folk/rock debut by the Manchester-based singer-songwriter Jasmine Cruickshank, whose moving songs tackle ambiguous relationships, identity, tangled joy, heartache, camaraderie and isolation of trans-feminine life in an LP produced by the Boygenius trio of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker
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The Weather Station: Humanhood
New album: Beautifully balanced, nuanced, delicate, intimate new experimental folk by Toronto’s Tamara Lindeman on a gorgeous seventh LP that goes to the individual and collective core of being alive, with a free-flowing semi-acoustic songs partly created by improvisation with her six-piece band, decorated with flurries of woodwind
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The second part of our favourite albums of 2024
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 2. Part 1 can be found here. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but please dig into this rich seam of originality and quality, and even suggest more of your own
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This year’s selections include some returning veterans at the top of their game as well as some fabulous newcomers
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 1. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but rich seams of originality and quality are certainly here to be enjoyed. Peruse away …
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Angel Olsen and various: Cosmic Waves Volume 1
New album: A novel form of “compilation reimagined as a dialogue” LP by the acclaimed, serene-voiced American singer-songwriter, showcasing five different lesser-known artists on Side A, and then covering other songs by them on Side B
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Native Harrow: Divided Kind
Album review: Released in September, classy, meticulously crafted, intelligent, warm Americana mix of folk, rock, pop and country by the Philadelphia duo of vocalist Devin Tuel and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms in this sixth LP
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Clarissa Connelly: World of Work
Album review: Originally released in April, this beautiful, sensual, mysterious, mystical alt-folk release by the Scotland-born, Denmark-raised and Copenhagen-based composer and singer is filled with long, rapturous notes, piano, strings, church bells, and themes of solitude and death, and evocative of sparse Scandinavian landscapes
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Aisha Badru: The Sun Still Rises
New album: Simple, soothing, gently philosophical but also emotional songs come with the breathy, tender voice of the New York singer-songwriter in this second album of lovely acoustic folk-pop, following 2018’s Pendulum, as well as several EPs
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Juanita Stein: The Weightless Hour
New album: This fourth solo album the the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of Australian indie band Howling Bells deals with heavy subjects with a light touch, a sparseness of style, and emotional potency
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Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens: American Railroad
New album: The latest in the Nashville singer’s projects with an international collective of musicians interprets traditional creates new folk songs, themed the tough history of the US rail frontier that was mostly built by Irish, African American, Chinese and Japanese immigrants
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Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp: Ventre Unique
New album: Wonderfully energetic, rhythmic stylish, inventive and witty sixth album by the 12-piece experimental Geneva collective who sing politically in French and English, their music decorated with oodles of of clever brass, violins, double-bass, marimbas, percussion and more
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