Deliciously ethereal and dark folk from the duo of Oxford’s Sharron Kraus and Philly’s Tara Burke (aka Fursaxa).

The first in forty-seven years from this veteran American Primitive. Witty, stark, smouldering guitarism, as ever.

Superb first album from Andy Cabic, Devendra Banhart, Otto Hauser et al.

‘A psychoacoustic odyssey through the American South, influenced as much by Dock Boggs as by Luc Ferrari. This isn’t ‘avant-folk’ as per, but more expansive avant-garde compositions using components of traditional music as tools for storytelling. There are banjos, but they bounce around the stereo field in hypnotic patterns; there are autoharps, but they’re bowed, left detuned by time and humidity, and augmented with sounds of screeching cicadas.
‘Check out the haunted, ambient interpretation of the murder ballad Omie Wise, featuring fourteen different versions of the song time-stretched and overlaid with pedal steel by Tongue Depressor’s Henry Birdsey. It’s a wild listen!’

Wonderful, half-enraptured, half-stoned, full-blown re-imagination of vintage country soul sublimity. (He likes Washington Phillips; you can hear Curtis.) Five star reviews everywhere.

Mostly this is slow, stricken Lucinda, as moving and compelling as she gets, grieving for her mum and furious with an ex. Worth putting up with the Patti Smith impressions.