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Starkly beautiful: The Crooked Carty Sings … with artwork by
New album: The Miraculous Mule frontman’s December solo album is a beautiful, tender, haunting, intimate, country and blues infused collection of “bastardised folk songs, murder ballads, traveller tunes and sea songs” variously with new lyrics and arrangements
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Favourite selection part 2.
Favourite albums of 2021 – Part 2: Welcome the second instalment, following Part 1, which can be found here. A huge number of excellent releases, of which again this is just a selection many of which were written during, and about lockdown, but also saw many outstanding voices emerge as well as innovative sounds developed
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Take your pick. Are your favourites here? Also check out Part 2 coming soon.
Favourite albums of 2021, part 1: Another difficult year for everyone, but from soul and jazz, electro-pop the experimental and avant-garde, an outstanding one for music releases, perhaps in part because out of diversity comes great art. Also feel free to explore Part 2, which is now available to view here.
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Blind Date Party album
New album: The brilliant veterans of darkly beautiful lo-fi and killer lyrics release a 2020-21 lockdown collaborative 19-song compilation of covers and reworked songs with just as many guests, including songs by Leonard Cohen, Yusuf Islam and Billie Eilish, as well as many Drag City labelmates
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Julie Doiron’s I Thought of You
New album: Cracking new LP by the influential 49-year-old Canadian indie singer-songwriter who has released multiple album under her own name, various other monikers, in French and Spanish, here with catchy, melancholy and moving songs
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Raise the Roof continues the elevation of Plant and Krauss 2007 album Raising Sand
New album: Fourteen years after their award-winning album Raising Sand, the pair reunite with another very fine covers album, ably produced by T Bone Burnett, of blues, country, soul, but also now infusing English folk
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Mysterious beauty: Fun House by Hand Habits
New album: New York-born Los Angeles-based artist Meg Duffy returns with her own distinctive form of electro-pop and Americana folk with very refined, dreamily sung songs that build on her excellent single Aquamarine
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The album cover, one of several paintings by Ghanaian movie poster artist Daniel Anum Jasper
New album: Stevens’ new collaborative album with fellow songwriter brings two complementary voices and talents together with light, melancholy and beautiful numbers that are all inspired by a diverse set of feature films
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Blue Banister’s is Lana Del Rey’s eighth studio album in 11 years
New album: The American singer-songwriter returns with her eighth LP and second LP of the year with further slow, cinematic piano-based numbers filled with her soaring voice and vivid, heartbreak stories and images
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Le Ren aka Lauren Spear
New album: Beautifully assembled tapestry of gentle, sensitive, personal songs about different relationships with mothers, lovers, and friends by Montreal singer-songwriter Lauren Spear who sings with refreshingly candid clarity and directness
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Shannon Lay’s firth solo album Geist
New album: As shown by the single Rare To Wake, profiled earlier this year, this fifth solo album by the LA singer-songwriter brings beautifully written songs performed with acoustic restraint, rich vocal harmonies and maturity
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Pokey LaFarge
New album: After 2020’s mischievously dark Rock Bottom Rhapsody, Illinois-born Andrew Heissler returns with his cherry-picking persona of Americana styles with a bright, clever and upbeat assortment of 1930s jazz, country, Hawaiian, calypso, folk and New Orleans R&B shuffle
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Spencer Cullum's Coin Collection
New album: An exquisite album, hauntingly beautiful by the London singer-songwriter and pedal steel guitarist re-located to Nashville is reminiscent of Nick Drake with added, electric guitar, organ, keyboards, flute and light percussion with a Tennessee twang
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The Killers’ Pressure Machine
New album: An atypical LP from the American stadium fillers eschews the sometimes nonsense (“are we human or are we dancer”) air-punching pop-rock anthems for more reflective material inspired by Brandon Flowers’ Utah childhood
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Reflectiive: Jade Bird’s Different Kinds of Light
New album: The 23-year-old English singer-songwriter and BRIT school graduate’s second LP after 2019’s debut is a strong selection of numbers influenced by Americana and more from Fleetwood Mac to PJ Harvey, Blur to various shades of country rock
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