Tag Archives: English folk music

Maddy Prior’s Flesh & Blood

Posted on 5th April 2016 by Richard Dansky

Nothing in life, we are told, has any business being perfect. Maddy Prior clearly understands this lesson, otherwise she wouldn’t have marred an otherwise near-perfect CD with an oddball cover of Todd Rundgren’s a capella moaner “Honest Work.” That being … Continue reading →

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Maddy Prior and June Tabor’s Silly Sisters and No More to the Dance

Posted on 17th March 2016 by Gereg Jones Muller

Take two of English folk music’s most phenomenal female vocalists, a lineup of backing musicians drawn from the best the field has to offer, and some terrific songs, and what do you get? Everything you could hope for from a … Continue reading →

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Magpie Lane’s A Taste of Ale

Posted on 11th February 2016 by Lars Nilsson

I must confess I find it very hard to be impartial about this one. Choosing to fill a whole CD with songs about one of my favourite subjects, English beer, Magpie Lane has surely won my heart. Magpie Lane is … Continue reading →

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Nick Burbridge & Tim Cotterell’s Gathered

Posted on 8th February 2016 by Lars Nilsson

Nick Burbridge is something of a Jack-of-all-trades. For more than a quarter of a century he has been active as a writer. He has written poetry, novels, short stories, plays and songs. He has also found time to co-found folk … Continue reading →

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Oyster Ceilidh Band’s Jack’s Alive, Oyster Band’s English Rock ‘N Roll: the Early Years (1800-1850) and Lie Back and Think of England

Posted on 24th January 2016 by Diverse Voices

Ed Dale wrote this review. I stumbled onto the Oysterband several years back via a copy of Little Rock to Leipzig, received as a premium during a college radio station’s fund drive. This was blind good luck. The two CDs I … Continue reading →

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“Trad Boys, Trad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do….?” Liege & Lief remembered.

Posted on 8th January 2016 by Deborah Grabien

I’ve said it before: 1969 was a very good year. No, seriously. From the end of 1968 until the Altamont fiasco in December 1969, I had more music than most people get in their lifetimes. It was nuts, in the … Continue reading →

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Stick In The Wheel’s From Here

Posted on 28th December 2015 by Gary Whitehouse

If I had known earlier about From Here, Stick in the Wheel’s debut full-length release, it probably would have earned a spot on my 2015 Top 10 list. As it is, it’s still one of my favorite albums from the … Continue reading →

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Jethro Tull’s Merry Christmas from Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull

Posted on 9th December 2015 by David Kidney

In the winter of 2003 Jethro Tull issued their first full-fledged Christmas album. It was called, creatively enough, The Jethro Tull Christmas Album and it featured Tullish renditions of some classic carols, along with a selection of songs written by … Continue reading →

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Steeleye Span’s Wintersmith

Posted on 31st May 2015 by Michael Hunter

It would be easy to say that a collaboration between Steeleye Span and Terry Pratchett was always inevitable, given their respective histories and their proclaimed admiration of each other’s work.  It may be an example of retrospective inevitability now that … Continue reading →

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June Tabor, Iain Ballamy & Huw Warren’s Quercus

Posted on 16th February 2014 by Gary Whitehouse

In a world filled with young divas and wannabes whose role models are the imitators of Whitney Houston’s double-barreled melisma and the manufactured pop and hip-hop princesses who can’t sing without auto-tune, it’s good to know that there are still … Continue reading →

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