folk-rock

John Martyn: One Other World (1977)

2016/09/19

Let’s blur boundaries. Let’s begin with English singer-songwriter John Martyn’s fascinating ode to the music of Jamaica.
Big Country: In A Big Country (1983)

2015/02/16

Big Country I’ll ask for forgiveness on this account. Sometimes in the journey to get somewhere, you lose track of time. In this instance, I completely misplaced my timeline for one supremely important neo-folk band. Perhaps one of the best, and last of a dying breed, the true quintessential Scottish folk-rock band: Big Country. If,…
The Waterboys: This is the Sea (1985)

2015/02/12

Mike Scott and the Waterboys Have you heard the Big Music? You probably already have. Its the music seemingly heard everywhere now, but not quite. Larger than life, its music that aims for the most tired of tropes: the epic song. It does so, be it by layering gigantic amounts of instruments and production tricks,…
Richard and Linda Thompson: Wall of Death (1982)

2015/02/04

Richard and Linda Thompson – 1980 In the same year as Kate Bush was heralding a new apex for neo-folk music, one of its original visionaries was turning off all the lights from its prior impetus. You see, in 1982, Richard and Linda Thompson released probably one of your parents or cool elder’s favorite English…
Steeleye Span: Demon Lover (1975)

2014/12/15

Steeleye Span – 1975 Just after slagging them off yesterday. Here I am championing them again. A few months before releasing “All Around My Hat”, and before the lure of cashing in was too much, Steeleye Span was hungry to present their viability as artists, that could be at the vanguard of something, first and…
Brian Eno: Discreet Music (1975)

2014/12/14

Pour down like silver. What an apropos name for whatever the hell was going on in classic English folk and folk-rock music in 1975. Nothing you’ll find this year from overground artists like Richard and Linda Thompson, Steeleye Span, Sandy Denny and more would truly be as valuable as the stuff that poured for from…
Richard and Linda Thompson: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974)

2014/12/09

Richard and Linda Thompson There’s something about the year 1974 that will trigger a sea change in the English musical landscape. A year before the rise of Thatcher and near the beginning of Labour’s inept descent into centrism, musicians were starting to feel the pangs of rebellion again. Before punk existed, there was one man…
Alan Stivell: Tri Martolod (1972)

2014/12/05

Alan Stivell – 1972 When we last left off Alan Stivell he was breathing new life into a genre threatened to be left in the dustbin of musical history. Breton folk music, and modern Celtic music as a whole experienced a revival of sorts due to his groundbreaking Renaissance de la Harpe Celtique. One year…
Steeleye Span: Cam Ye O’er Frae France (1973)

2014/11/21

Steeleye Span There’s something so telling about today’s tracks. Everything about Steeleye Span signify the bloated culmination of English folk-rock as most people know it. So spectacularly dense in its concentration of Englishness that the songs I chose from them today both contain everything most people hate about the genre and everything that people justifiably…
Paul Giovanni and Magnet: Corn Rigs (1973)

2014/11/17

Paul Giovanni singing “Gently Johnny” in a The Wicker Man scene. Somehow, we’ve come full circle. At a time when most of English neo-folk bands were in some weird half-baked musical purgatory, an American came along to light a fire in their bellies again. This time it was New Yorker Paul Giovanni, sometime playwright, actor,…