Tag: folk

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h.pruz – Arrival

h.pruz’s new album Red sky at morning is a stripped mix of folk songwriting and small, tactile electronic details. Co-producer Felix Walworth adds Wurlitzer, soft synth lines and loose percussion that drift under the vocals rather than lead them. The tracks feel like short scenes, each clearly shaped by specific moments and memories. The sound is quiet and spacious but warm, built on acoustic guitar, piano, sax and concise synth phrases, and calls to mind similarly reflective LPs by artists like Adrianne Lenker and Tomberlin.

https://hpruz.bandcamp.com/album/red-sky-at-morning

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Betty Hammerschlag – Circlesss

Betty Hammerschlag arrives on blush with a beautiful set of abstracted folk diversions on her new LP fake girl. Sits somewhere between Grouper and ML Buch; with heartwrenching melodies submerged beneath layers of reverb, dust and melancholy.

https://blushtbc.bandcamp.com/album/fake-girl

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One Track Mind: Marissa Nadler

Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz

The Nashville-based dream-folk artist on transportive power of a Bob Dylan live performance

The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!

Marissa Nadler has been quietly reshaping the edges of folk for more than two decades. Her records linger in that space between dream and memory, carried by a voice that feels both fragile and unshakable. Across nine albums, she’s built a body of work that blends spectral storytelling with a painter’s eye for detail, often shifting between stark acoustic pieces and more expansive, layered arrangements.

Her new album, New Radiations, continues that trajectory with a subtle but noticeable shift. The songs carry her usual haunted grace, but there’s a warmth that feels new: textures of synth and soft percussion woven around her fingerpicked guitar. The record holds to her talent for atmosphere while suggesting a degree of light breaking through the familiar shadows.

For her One Track Mind selection, Marissa has chosen to highlight a live version of a song from a folk legend.

Continue reading “One Track Mind: Marissa Nadler”
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Music

Avi C. Engel – Nyx

Photo credit: Tanja-Tiziana

I’ve written about Avi C. Engel’s music a few times before on TPW and their music always stops me in my tracks. Nyx is the opening track from their latest album, Mote on the UK label Fenny Compton – an 8-track collection based around voice and acoustic guitar – and is as haunting and evocative a slice of alternative folk as you’re likely to hear this year.

https://fennycompton.bandcamp.com/album/fc8-mote

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ØXN – Cruel Mother (Ben Frost Remix)

The bones of ØXN’s folk-horror lament are still visible in this expansive remix – Radie Peat’s (also of Lankum) voice remains spectral and clear – but Frost drags the track into darker terrain, stretching and fraying its edges until it feels less like a song and more like a summoning.

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Anna B Savage – Talk To Me

Anna B Savage’s third album, You and i are Earth, is deeply tied to her relationship with Ireland—both as a place and as a new home. It’s an album about healing and curiosity, framed as “a love letter to a man and to Ireland.” Her extraordinary voice is the centrepiece, moving effortlessly between raw power and delicate vulnerability, making every moment feel intimate and unguarded. Following A Common Turn and in|FLUX, this record feels both personal and open-ended, blending tenderness with a grounded, tactile quality.

https://annabsavage.bandcamp.com/album/you-i-are-earth

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Clara Mann – Driving Home The Long Way

Reflective country-esque indie-folk from Clara Mann whose debut album Rift is out March 7 via state51. Ideal for sub-zero mornings in January when the year head looks both invigoratingly full of potential and impossibly exhausting.

https://claramann.bandcamp.com/album/rift

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Music

Baba Stiltz & Okay Kaya

Trying to get back into regular new music posts, but it’s very challenging with all these best of lists taking up my time. It’s exhausting! Sometimes I need to reminder myself that’s not actually a job and it’s supposed to be fun. Which it mostly is, but not always. Anyway – here’s a jaunty, heartwarming collab between Baba Stiltz and Okay Kaya – released on Christmas Day no less!

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Music

Loma – How It Starts

Loma’s 2020 album Don’t Shy Away was one of the best of the year: its somewhat paranoid but ultimately reassuringly intimacy the perfect companion for heading into a winter of lockdown bleakness. Four years later we now have the follow up How Will I Live Without A Body, and while the overall atmosphere hasn’t changed drastically – recording techniques include using the ruin of a 12th-century chapel as a reverb chamber – I’m not sure it quite reaches the insular beauty of it’s predecessor. How It Starts is lovely though.

https://lomamusic.bandcamp.com

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Music

Sufjan Stevens – Sister

It’s hard to explain just how of an emotional connection I have to Sufjan Steven’s 2024 album Seven Swans. Reissued today for its 20th anniversary, it was the first album I listened to, and I vividly remember the experience. It was like nothing I’d heard before, and started an intense and continuing obsession. Sister is probably the album’s emotional peak, with closer The Transfiguration coming in a close second. But the entire album is flawless. I have still never heard anything that approaches its raw emotion and stripped down beauty. I love you, Sufjan.

https://asthmatickitty.com