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Bill Callahan’s new album’s YTILAER plays mischief with search engines
New album: Dreams, horses, darkness and uplifting otherworldliness feature in this wonderful, mischievously mirror-titled ninth LP under the Smog artists’s own name, pouring out velvet voiced beauty, vivid lines, deadpan humour, acoustic intimacy and full band momentum
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Björk’s 10th Fossora, inspired by fungi, grows on the listener
New album: The Icelandic iconic pioneer returns with a 10th LP, mesmeric, strange, beautiful, sometimes challenging, but always original, inspired by fungi, the death of her mother, oodles of woodwind, rich vocal harmony and some Dutch techno
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Jake Blount
New album: After his acclaimed 2020 solo debut Spider Tales, the American bluegrass fiddler, banjo player, Afrofuturist and historian returns with a starkly beautiful, atmospheric album drawing on old spiritual numbers and set in a climate-changed, apocalyptic world
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Beth Orton’s Weather Alive
New album: The first album for six years by the British singer-songwriter brings an exquisite fragility and mature beauty, suffused with her delicate, sometimes ghostly vocals and sparse but perfectly weighted instrumentation
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Jesca Hoop: Order of Romance
New album: An exquisite new release by the American singer-songwriter with a collection of crisply perfect lo-fi folk-pop acoustic numbers, wrapped in intriguing, intricate yet pared-back instrumentation, and sharply intelligent, vividly imaginative lyrics
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Miraculous Mule: Old Bones, New Fire
New album: Channelling the spirit and sound of the Delta and Appalachian Mountains, a superbly evocative, haunting, powerful new release by the Anglo-Irish Londoners with reworked traditional blues and gospel given a stirring new lease of life
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New album: This third LP by the Australian artist typifies her intelligently written, nuanced, taut, intensely performed dream pop and alt-country, packed with confessional hidden narratives and subtleties, her expressive, fragile voice with stripped back accompaniment
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Delicately melancholy: Cass McCombs’ Heartmind
New album: This tenth LP by the American folk, psych and alt-country singer-songwriter brings songs of perfect, effortless poise and weight, with touching, melancholy, moving, philosophical tales of musicians and soldiers, karaoke machines and fast-food restaurants, and is dedicated to departed musicians Chet JR White, Sam Jayne and Neal Casal
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Amanda Shires: taking no prisoners
New album: Stirring, potent folk-country-power-pop by the Texan singer-songwriter and violinist and Highwomen founder, who on this 10th solo album extends her stylistic repertoire with orchestral and almost Radiohead-like guitar atmospherics alongside her expressive, emotive voice
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Tender and low key: Florist by Florist
New album: After 2019’s Emily Alone when Brooklyn singer songwriter Emily Sprague recorded the LP on her own, the band four-piece reunite for a beautiful lo-fi indie folk 16-track album of tenderness, rough edges, woozy sounds and rainy porch acoustic
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Riderless Horse, Nina’s first studio album for 12 years and her seventh overall
New album: Devastatingly stark and powerful first album for 12 years by the American folk singer-songwriter that focuses on her abusive, intense, dysfunctional 25-year relationship with her former manager and collaborator Kennan Gudjonsson
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Jack White’s latest solo record – Entering Heaven Alive – his second of 2022
New album: Only three months since his fierce, high-octane LP Fear of The Dawn, the now Nashville-based artist’s second of the year is more of an folk songwriting record, with guitar, piano, some additional strings, with the feel of evening porch rendition, and even harks back to the more acoustic White Stripes numbers
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Joan Shelley: The Spur
New album: Pure of voice, with gently acoustic accompaniment, perfectly weighted melody and perceptive lyric, a gorgeous new ninth album by the Kentucky folk musician, including a number with Bill Callahan
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Laura Veirs comes out of a darkness
New album: Sensitive, quirky, melancholy, intimate, candid, and wonderfully beautiful folk-pop by the Portland singer-songwriter dappled with acoustic instruments and arresting lines is her 12th, but first LP after splitting from her husband and longtime producer
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Fern Maddie: Ghost Story
Debut album: Terrific first LP by the Vermont singer-songwriter, guitarist and banjo player who draws influence from English, Irish and Scottish folk who has a talent for poignant lyrics, beautiful playing and a quiet, but striking voice
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Gwenno’s Third album, Tresor
New album: Third LP by the Welsh artist, another almost entirely in the Cornish language, is an alluring mix of pop, ethereal psych-folk and electronica inspired by recent motherhood and the lockdown experience
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Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler: For All Our Days That Tear The Heart
New album: An outstanding collaboration between the Irish actress and singer and the former Suede guitarist with this beautiful album of passionate, dramatic, folk music of various international styles, with all the added depth, subtlety, dynamism of emotional power of both Jeff Buckley and Joni Mitchell
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Wilco’s double album, Cruel Country
New album: With a double-edged title referring to both style and content, the Chicago band return with a strong, 21-track double album of country-edged music brimful with fine melodies, melancholy but sharply pointed lyrics
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Angel Olsen’s sixth album, Big Time
New album: Majestic, slow-paced and emotionally powerful, an outstanding country-tinged dark folk dream-pop sixth LP by the American singer-songwriter inspired by liberation and grief – coming out to her aged parents in 2021 very shortly before their deaths
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Florence: medieval purging
New album: Dance yourself to death? Beyond the huge machinery of mainstream hype and her voluminously voiced self-reflection, Florence Welch’s fifth album about purging her demons does also contain some strong tunes
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