Releases > Releases May 2025

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TERN
Flyway
Own Label, 9 Tracks, 42 Minutes
www.ternfolk.bandcamp.com
A new instrumental quintet combining Scottish and Scandinavian musicians, Tern are Rose Logan and Kristina Leesik on fiddles, Lea Søndergaard Larsen on bodhran, Portuguese guitarist Miguel Girão, and Scots Young Traditional Musician of the year Amy Laurenson bringing her Shetland piano skills. Their sound is compelling, enthralling, often exciting and always entertaining.
Most of the material on Flyway is traditional, arranged in Scots or Scandi contemporary style. Smackpolskan, Storpolska and Blodomloppet feature newly composed Scandinavian tunes, everything from powerful, chilling reels to gentle flowing airs, with a touch of classical piano behind the twin fiddles. Kristina’s driving Bordunpolskan slips nicely into the jaunty Living Stream, a jaunty Sliabh Luachra polka by Jackie Daly followed by two traditional polkas. Ireland is represented by a couple of jigs too, including The Orphan which features a nice guitar solo, and a pair of old Gan Ainm melodies taken slow here.
Tern mix and match tempos with abandon. Slowest is the song air Tha mo Ghaol s’ aig Dònal, perhaps learnt from Caithness accordionist Carol-Anne Mackay. Another Gaelic title, more well known, is the strathspey Nighean Donn na Gobhar, played here as a blistering reel with an imaginative dynamic arrangement before settling into the more familiar snapped strathspey timing. Flyway gives each member space to shine and experiment, while also offering big ensemble pieces. A pair of Norwegian Hallings features another guitar break, and the bodhran beats strongly to link pieces together. The final trio of Shetland reels delivers a strong finish on Come Again, You’re Welcome, a title which sums up my thoughts on this album.
Alex Monaghan

COUNTERCURRENT
Flow
Own Label, 15 Tracks, 56 Minutes www.countercurrentmusic.com
A real melting pot of traditional music, Flow is the fourth full album from this Washington State duo enhanced by Juliet Terrill on upright bass. Most tracks centre on the fiddle and guitar of Alex Sturbaum and Brian Lindsay, but several layers of other instruments are often added. Between them, Alex and Brian can cover everything from bluegrass to céilí band and back again. They have three previous full albums on Bandcamp, and all of them are more Irish-flavoured than this one: they describe album number four as “a cohesive moment of our original tunes and musical ideas”, and it certainly hangs together nicely. Flow is probably going on my 2025 Top Ten list.
The American contra scene where Countercurrent started out is a mix of Irish, French, Scottish, and various American styles. Tunes from Paddy Fahey, Ed Reavy and Andy May sit alongside oldtime classics Devil in the Strawsack and Little Billy Wilson. The other thirteen tunes here are Countercurrent compositions. Of the two songs, one is by Sturbaum and the other is by Northumbrian musician Nancy Kerr. Lindsay and Sturbaum combine all these ingredients into a coherent whole which makes me think of bands like The Fretless, Socks in the Frying Pan, early Nickel Creek, Saltfishforty or even Patrick Street.
The playing is excellent, and many of the new pieces on Flow are truly memorable. I particularly liked the upbeat Brighter, the funky swing of Curiouser, the sparse grinding arrangement on The Reptile Room, and the full-on finish with three sparkling new reels. Check out Countercurrent online: you won’t be disappointed.
Alex Monaghan

AMELIA HOGAN
Burnished
Own Label, 14 Tracks, 54 Minutes www.ameliahogan.com
Amelia Hogan sings traditional Irish, Scottish, British American, and Contemporary folk music. If you are a fan of simple, effective and authentic folk song, this album will be on your keepers shelf. Based in California, Amelia is joined by Richard Mandel, Jimmy Murphy, Marla Fibish, Skyler Blakeslee, Maureen Brennan, Lewis Santer, Steve O’Neill, Ray Frank, and Christa Burch. The album was produced by Amelia at Foxtail Sound in Dixon, California.
Readers of this magazine know the work of Marla Fibish intimately, and here her mandolin shines with the right amount of grace and tinkling sparkle on track after track; her accompaniment is more Denis Cahill than tarantella tremolo. The Celtic Diaspora’s experience runs through Rolling in the Gold like marbled intrusions in granite, sitting into a narrative tradition explaining the pull, the power and the potential of riches way out west.
There’s a look we carry down the generations that stares at us whenever we look in the mirror, Amelia catches the glimpse on Blue is The Eye. A mother soothes her child to sleep, assuring her that she will watch over her. There are two tracks that dip into a darker kind of folk song. We all know the Wayfaring Stranger; Amelia sows this with a deep respect, honouring its Appalachian roots. The other is called Snow Hare, which I immediately thought would work in Lankum’s songbook.
Her voice on the Patriots Game reminded me so much of the late lamented Mary McPartlan. The tempo lifts on Dh’erich Mi Moch Madainn Cheitein, a waulking song first collected in the 1970s in Scotland, according to the Tobar an Dualchais website.
The track that had the biggest impression on me, was the final one: Who Will Watch The Home Place?, sung in close harmony with her bandmates. It asks a question we all must face. What will happen to what I’ve built when I’m gone? It may sound like a sad ending, but it makes this album a grown up experience, and it left me wanting to hear more of Amelia Hogan.
Seán Laffey

GABRIEL MORENO
Nights in the Belly of Bohemia
Own Label, 10 Tracks, 37 Minutes
www.gabrielmoreno.co.uk
The Cultural Ambassador of Gibraltar, poet, singer-songwriter, Gabriel Moreno has just launched Nights in the Belly of Bohemia with themes that explore boundaries, identity, relationships, belonging and meditations on the unfathomable rhythms of human existence.
With gravelly, baritone vocals, all original songs, the opening one On the Edge of a Dream lays out his literary stall, evoking the lover, friend, stranger, listener to the edge and asking them “stay here with me”.
Half Way House uses liminal spaces, unknown, dark (like the portal to the ‘otherworld’ of Celtic mythology, a world where a hero might enter upon the invitation of a king or beautiful women), elements of shape-shifting, transformation. Moreno’s lyrics are philosophical, deeply personal with universal appeal.
Slightly accented, a spoken word poet, delivered in a Leonard Cohen-esque timbre, When you kill the thing you love, the author asks pertinent, poignant questions of a relationship, in dramatic monologue.
Coming from a Latin background, he melds a variety of tastes and cultures to achieve uniqueness, with violins, electric guitars, bass and percussion. His warm vocals and the lack of urgency in the songs has quiet appeal, juxtaposed with the huge emotional swings from celebratory to despair. This is an unusual album, asking big questions, recurring themes where the writing insists that art, culture, literature and earthy connections between people are the most fundamental, rewarding and fulfilling paths to enrich the experience of living.
The cover art is simple yet arresting, a womb like image, smoothed marble bowl encasing a human head, the mind encased, safe on a bedrock, simultaneously open and closed.
In collaboration with Pablo Campos, Pablo Yuptom, Juampi Mauro, Richard Moore, Dave Burns and Ty Watling, Moreno has created a genre-defying piece of work, contemporary but rooted in other worlds, other cultures, other vibes. It should be captivating in live performance.
Anne Marie Kennedy

HARTWIN
Unfolding
Trad Records, 9 Tracks, 36 Minutes
www.hartwin.be
Flanders based accordionist Hartwin Dhoore’s latest album is a collaboration with conductor Gabriel Hollander and a classical string trio, consisting of Nicolas Dupont (violin), Clément Holvoet (viola) & Julius Himmler (cello).
We previously reviewed Hartwin’s album Valge Valgus, which in retrospect hid the beginnings of a music trajectory that on Unfolding blends the boundaries between folk music, classical music, and film music. If I were to find a single adjective to describe this album, it would be “calming”. Coming from a tradition where the accordion is called upon to strike the tinder of dance tunes, Hartwin’s music is an invitation to leave the dance floor and chill as you watch the world go by.
Unfolding is the opening track, it makes a slow beginning, echoing the album’s cover image, a blurred yellow burst of an opening flower, perhaps it is a lily? The music here is as seductive as Pachelbel’s famous canon. There’s a doleful cello and a deep sadness at the start of When at Ease, bowed long notes usher in the accordion, which adds a sympathetic melody. It is anything but an abrupt entrance, the effect is to be cocooned in comfort. Floating begins with a gentle repeated phrase with the strings rumbling in their lowest register, again the bass comforts and caresses us. On White Light it is as if we are waking from a restful slumber, the moon surrendering the darkness to a slowly lightening grey, like lifting the mists of a Benelux morning. This is not the scary sunrise of Edvard Munch;  parts of this track sound like they were inspired by Scottish slow airs. This gentle pathway keeps on to the end of the album and Nightfall looping us into quiet contemplation.
For the times that we live in, spending just over half an hour in Hartwin’s company could just be the antidote to the modern madness of our 24/7 online lives.
Seán Laffey

PETER KNIGHT’S GIGSPANNER BIG BAND
Turnstone
Own Label, 10 Tracks, 65 Minutes
www.gigspanner.com/gigspanner-big-band
For our younger readers, Mr Knight has quite the pedigree, he’s the former fiddler with Steeleye Span, arguably England’s most successful folk rock band of all time (OK Fairport fans, but did Swarb get a TV series?). I had the pleasure of seeing the original Gigspanner trio perform before the pandemic, and now they are back with an expanded line up of: Peter Knight (violin), Roger Flack (guitar), Sacha Trochet (drums), Hannah Martin (violin, banjo & tenor guitar), Phillip Henry (Dobro & harmonica), John Spiers (melodeon). Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin (who perform as Edgelarks) joined Gigspanner in 2016.
There is an underlying musical genealogy here, particularly the songs of Martin Carthy who brought to life the collections of Francis James Child and created a new kind of old-English folk song. There are distinct echoes of Carthy’s style in songs such as Solvay, Suffolk Miracle, and Hind Horn. Knight will also be forever associated with Maddy Prior and her characteristic folk-soprano voice; Gigspanner have dropped down an octave and found an alto in Hannah Martin.
A device the band uses in a number of tracks is the long intro, for example, on the American song Fortune Turns Her Wheel. There is a blend of percussion and electric guitar on Betsy Williams and then Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More, which Knight closes with his new composition Arthur Peter’s Reel. The final track is a live recording, Spiers playing Northern Frisk on his melodeon, Henry’s harmonica gives a blues shuffle to the old Irish tune The Red Haired Boy and Knight finishes with a flourish with his new tune Moth From Upstairs.
Gigspanner’s music is at once modern and I suspect soon it will be hailed as classic English folk rock. Knight has been around for at least four decades and his musical mind and his fiddling dexterity are as nimble as ever they were. The Gigspanner Big Band might just be the force he’s been waiting to turn over to the world.
Seán Laffey

TERENCE BLACKER
Misfits’ Jamboree
Own Label, 11 Tracks, 48 Minutes
www.terenceblacker.com
Terence Blacker is a man of many talents. He shares his potted bio on his website, saying: “Most of my life I have earned my living by writing books and newspaper columns. Since the age of eight, I’ve played a stringed instrument, first a ukulele and then a guitar.”
In the context of this magazine, he’s a singer-songwriter with a quirky way with words and a left field look at life. Let us explore some of his tracks. From the outset Blacker is an accomplished guitar player and his lifetime of writing to tight deadlines gives him an edge when it comes to making memorable songs dotted with well-chosen phrases.
His first salvo is No, Sorry, It’s Gone, a visit to our future world where our memory is not as good as it used to be. His future self still knows all the words to American Pie but when he contemplates a trip to heaven, he forgets the name of the gatekeeper. The Crying Game considers the cult of celebrity and the media’s obsession with a bad backstory. Being good at the task in hand is not enough, you have to have a sob-story to dance in the glitter ball’s transient stars. It’s snake oil persuasion, becoming a celebrity yourself eases the pain of your past, as if! He argues the flip side on Just like James, creating a conversation with James Taylor, who he imagines would swap the public prison of fame and notoriety for an ordinary life.
Blacker brings us into his world, especially where music is enjoyed as a simple pleasure, on Singers’ Night. He calls the regulars at an open mic session “the old folk army, the foot soldiers of the Blues”. They gather once a week to step away from their not so wonderful everyday. I think Blacker would agree with all of us, music makes the everyday that bit easier to navigate. Misfits’ Jamboree is a hoot of an album.
Seán Laffey

SUE HARDING
The World
Own Label, 10 Tracks, 43 Minutes
www.suehardingsongs.com
Following on from her debut album of original songs, Flight, Sue Harding’s The World continues in her signature folk style, hints of the 60’s and 70’s in her compositions. This album is named for the last card in the tarot deck, a symbol of reinvention, regeneration, new beginnings, mirrored here in the songs’ subjects.
With lyrical ease, The Bloody Rose, ostensibly a road trip narration, is a deeply dark, gothic journey, gripping imagery, exploring uncomfortable territory with confident writing, the aftermath of domestic abuse, a “papa” who was a “shit filled snake”, until his own child became victim and “they took him down”, a cinematic piece, gripping. With more shades of the American mid-west than the west country, gripping in detail, the lonesome fiddle and strings superbly arranged, situational mood music and a superb showcase of her vocal range, enchanting quivers and harmonies.
Then there’s the upbeat Barflies, the not-so-young woman with the youthful mindset in “snake skin shoes”, who comes vividly alive on the late night dance floor, though she’s got “the wrinkly blues and no time to lose”, a playful number, jazzy-bluesy accompaniment, soulful, lovely, thematically aligning with the Latin carpe diem.
Old Glass is an introspective look at life with all its quirks, the warped glass a metaphor for haphazardness, irregularity, like Harry Chapin’s “flowers are red and green leaves are green”, the imperfect, crooked glass allows the viewer to see other possibilities, because straight lines are restrictive to this poet, “straight lines hold the world in”. A soul-searching song, melancholic and melodic with superb accompaniment on guitars, ethereal, intricate harmonic touches, a delicate song, subtle, thought-provoking message.
Produced by Will Angelero, featuring Gemma White, Al Cosnett, Steve Ricketts, Sarah Vian and Jane Langley, The World is released in April 2025.
Anne Marie Kennedy

EDEL MURPHY
Jolene
Own Label, Single, 3 Minutes
www.edelmurphymusic.com
Edel Murphy is an acclaimed singer, actor and musician, originally from Dublin, she’s toured extensively with Celtic Woman and has been a featured soloist with Riverdance. She’s also recently starred in a show called Motherland Songs, a musical jukebox of unforgettable anthems drawn from a wide variety of genres.
Her new single Jolene takes a much-loved Dolly Parton classic and succeeds in transforming the song into a haunting and deeply emotional Celtic-tinged lament, slowing the tempo and embellishing the vocal with a haunting low whistle figure. Edel has a beautiful soprano voice which invests the lyric with a fresh authenticity, full of subtle twists in her interpretation of a song which is often performed as a copycat of the original – here she has totally re-invented the arrangement, and the audio production is first-class. She also plays guitar on the track.
She operates in close collaboration with producer Ewan Cowley, they’ve worked together since her Celtic Woman days and the two have a deep artistic connection which shines through on this latest offering. On this evidence, Edel will become a much more prominent figure in Irish music, as she has the natural talent and creative vision to make a real impact.
Mark Lysaght

NIALL TEAGUE and PADRAIC JOYCE
Homegrown Potatoes
Own Label, Single, 3 Minutes
www.niallteagueandpadraicjoycemusic.com
This single mashes witty lyrics with deft musicianship, featuring fiddle playing from Neil Fitzgibbon (Susan O’ Neill), percussion from Jim Higgins (Christy Moore, The Stunning, Paul Brady) and foot-tapping double bass from Kelvin Busher (Sharon Shannon, The Whileaways).
If you are lucky enough to have a quarter acre at the back of your house, St. Patrick’s Day isn’t about small town parades and dressing your dog in a tricolour. No, for people of a rural persuasion it’s the green light for the planting season, the time when the potatoes go in the ground. Despite their tragic Irish backstory, there is always hope in late March. A future promise that your homegrown potatoes will be a treat, whether they be the sweet first earlies of June or the substantial main crops of September.
Would you join the debate? Roosters or British Queens, floury or waxy, would you try Sarpro Mira? (Those Hungarian varieties don’t get blight and grow until the first frost, but take what seems like hours to boil). Then the question? Are you a traitor to tradition if you peel the spud before they go into the pot?  And why would you? They are delish in their jackets (surely a leftover from the Lumper days?). And Forget Parmentier or Dauphinois, bacon and cabbage sits nicely with a steaming floury spud or three.
Solanum tuberosa in all its varieties is happy food and Niall Teague echoes this with a catchy chorus. And his lyrics will make you chuckle, set to a tune served with a touch of country from the fiddle, you’ll dig that (sorry pun intended). You can see a live recording of the song from Niall’s Galway base on YouTube and the track is available on Bandcamp. It’s clever and catchy and absolutely not serious; it will put a smile on your face months before the vegetables grace your plate.
Seán Laffey