Harvest of Highlights

  • June 2024 Playlist

    The Red Rooster Festival might well become my annual curtain raiser to the festival season. I am just back from attending my second year there having long been recommended it by friends who too have an appreciation of great music in quite a grand setting stately home grounds setting. The tone is mainly rootsy, there… Read more

  • May 2024 Playlist

    The world of record collecting always has the capacity to throw up a wonderful surprise but if you want those moments of euphoria you must put in the hard yards. Unless you are very lucky, the occasions of uncovering buried treasure will not come about unless you have spent hours looking through boxes, shelves, attics… Read more

  • 29th April 2024

    Leyla McCalla – Scaled To Survive Leyla has, during the past ten years of solo releases after raising her profile as part of Carolina Chocolate Drops, released some essential albums often thematically linked, be it a tribute to the writer Langston Hughes or a deep dive into the history of Haiti’s first Kreyol-language radio station.… Read more

  • 15th April 2024

    Waxahatchee ft. M J Lenderman – Right Back To It The new Waxahatchee album ‘Tiger Blood’ is out now and a must hear if some springtime alt-country promise is your bag. More than that though, this song especially flows so naturally it instantly sounds like a lolling western standard, so sweetly do the verses sail… Read more

  • 8th April 2024

    Hannah Frances – Vacant Intimacies Hannah has many facets to her art and performance being simultaneously a composer, guitarist, poet, singer and movement artist. Her latest and third album ‘Keeper Of The Shepherd’, released by the Ruination Record Co., is a mesmerising set which manages to pull in influences as diverse as freak folk, progressive… Read more

  • April 2024 Playlist

    Prompted by the terribly sad news of his passing this month, I have been back on a deep re-examination and appreciation of Karl Wallinger’s music. Primarily within the working vehicle for his songs, World Party, but also covering his too brief mid-eighties contributions to the Waterboys as well as the Peter Gabriel led Big Blue… Read more