Harvest of Highlights

  • Kathryn Williams – Night Drives

    My first awareness of Kathryn Williams ‘Night Drives’ was noticing someone online declaring it ‘a classic’. That kind of fanfare can prejudice you against a release, is it possible to announce something ‘classic’ immediately on its release? I recall Shindig! Magazine declaring an album by the Lemon Twigs, roughly around 2017, as a surefire album… Read more

  • Nicole Cassandra Smit – Third In Line

    Nicole Cassandra Smit caught my attention in late 2021, a track called ‘Strong Woman’ popped up out of thin air (you know how it is when you hunt around the internet for new sounds, I cannot remember where it appeared, most likely a radio show or an algorithm offering me something I might like) and… Read more

  • Michael Wollny Trio – Ghosts

    Sometimes an instrumental jazz album, in this case by a piano trio coming out of left field, can knit together far more cohesively if constructed around a theme. There is an abundance of that kind of glue trickling down on ‘Ghosts,’ because the unity relates to a number of factors. There is the literal sense… Read more

  • Lady Wray – Piece Of Me

    I do wish that albums like this were not saddled with the label ‘retro’ because it reduces what is, in this case, an outstanding piece of work. All that an artist is doing in producing music with this much analogue style warmth, is treating soul music with the respect it deserves and taking the trouble… Read more

  • Caleb Nichols – Ramon

    It is quite a bold move to base a conceptual project around a song character on a classic album then moulding it musically to the style of pop masters like The Beatles. If you want the audience to accept your premise you must at least create something that can sit in tandem with work established… Read more

  • Laura Jurd – The Big Friendly Album

    The four-piece band that trumpeter Laura Jurd rose to prominence in, Dinosaur, are a wonderful explosion of expressive free-flowing jazz-fusion occupying their own unique niche. Not exactly heavy, neither is much of their music an easy listen, it is a complex, often fast paced, mash-up of electronic jazz stylings with a progressive rock edge and… Read more