Abi Bliss meets the pitch-perfect post-folk Lancastrian

“So long as I can remember I’ve always had tunes going round in my head. And then when I got older, it made sense to make sense of those noises, to put them out in some kind of form, because I always used to just hum constantly and not [...]

How excited are we? One of folkingcool’s top faves ever, Johnny Flynn has announced details of a new EP. It’s been a long time coming but Sweet William – the follow up to the fabulous A Larum – is out on 30 November and contains four new tracks.

Ahead of the EP release Johnny has embarked [...]

The first and most important thing to say about this album is that it has The Most Lovely Song In The World on’t. Birthday is a sob-sob gulperama originally written and performed by the Sugarcubes (y’know, Bjork and that). You can really hear Bjork’s influence in the song but when you go back and listen [...]

Ralph McTell takes Simon Heptinstall by the hand

He wrote and sang one of the best-known British folk songs of all time, has been a pivotal figure in British folk for 45 years and was one of the main reasons I took up playing guitar as a teenager (the other was inevitably to do with girls). [...]

The newly-reshaped Unthanks – or Rachel Unthank & The Winterset as was – have rejigged their line-up and tweaked their sound as this third album lands on our desks, appropriately just as the nights draw in and winter sneaks its icy fingers round the door.

Not that this album exactly repackages the bleakness of its predecessor [...]