Melanie McGovern

Tiny Ruins – Some Were Meant for Sea

★★★
Tiny Ruin’s debut album, Some Were Meant for Sea, paints tender and quaint stories of fictitious, perhaps allegorical figures that are as vivid as the climes in which they are placed.

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Maria Taylor – Overlook

by Melanie McGovern 3 October 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★
Maria Taylor’s fourth solo release, Overlook, fixes itself firmly in a familiar location, embodying a sound created with a closeknit set of musicians plucked from Taylor’s close friends and family.

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Downpilot – New Great Lakes

by Melanie McGovern 29 September 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★
Paul Hiraga’s Downpilot latest release, New Great Lakes, was recorded in the woodland setting of Seattle’s Vashon Island, and herein captured is the more intimate, solo affair this fourth Downpilot outing harbours.

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Jeffrey Lewis – A Turn in the Dream-Songs

by Melanie McGovern 27 September 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★★★
Initially ‘A Turn in the Dream-Songs’ plays out as a far less angsty affair than other helpings from New York based musician Jeffrey Lewis but there is little letting up in the talent of our comic book songwriter.

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Small Houses – North

by Melanie McGovern 23 September 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★★★
Michigan based band Small Houses return with their second LP North. Composed entirely by guitarist/vocalist Jeremy Quentin, featuring helping hands from fellow musicians Chris Bathgate and Jim Roll, alongside members of Frontier Ruckus and Red Tail Ring.

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Interview: The Wilderness of Manitoba

by Melanie McGovern 19 September 2011 Features

We chat to Will Whitwham of Canadian five-piece The Wilderness of Manitoba ahead of their short stop over in London, and debut European release When You Left the Fire.

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Orienteers – Orienteers

by Melanie McGovern 16 September 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★★★
Orienteers’ eponymous second release is a hazy, fragile, almost celestial sounding appreciation of travel (hence the name), and it follows up 2008′s Staying Places; released by the same folk under their original guise That’s the Spirit.

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King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Honest Words EP

by Melanie McGovern 15 September 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★★★
Honest Words may clock in at just over 10 minutes; this time whisking us away from the Fife landscape, yet it plays out as a suitable follow up to King Creosote & Jon Hopkins‘ Mercury nominated Diamond Mine.

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Interview: Other Lives

by Melanie McGovern 9 September 2011 Features

We caught up with Other Lives’ songwriter and frontman Jesse Tabish at North London venue The Lexington to discuss his chamber-pop project’s current release Tamer Animals, touring and classical music.

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Festival Review: End of the Road Festival 2011

Festival Review: End of the Road 2011

by Melanie McGovern 9 September 2011 Live Reviews

End of the Road festival yet again evaded the wet weather bookending it, and returned to the Larmer Tree gardens in Salisbury with a new layout, new ‘The Woods’ stage and perhaps its most varied line up yet.

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Live Review: Tasseomancy – C.A.M.P Basement

by Melanie McGovern 8 September 2011 Live Reviews

Last week’s Tasseomancy album release show at London venue CAMP exposed a short yet evocative set illuminating their talents as songwriters and songmakers, but more so as mood makers.

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Gudrid Hansdóttir – Beyond the Grey

by Melanie McGovern 2 September 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★★★
Gudrid Hansdóttir’s work is a stirring mix of contemporary classical music and rural inspired folk, combining songs of English language with bewitching fables in her native Faroese tongue, an insular Nordic language spoken by fewer than 50,000 people.

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Cocos Lovers – Elephant Lands

by Melanie McGovern 31 August 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★★★
Cocos Lovers are a band of huge scale and huge sound whose compositions are a heady concoction of something for everyone. Read our Elephant Lands review.

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Benjamin Francis Leftwich – Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm

by Melanie McGovern 30 August 2011 Folk Music Reviews

★★★★★
Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s latest release Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm feels like an album better left for background listening; moments of beauty and odd lyrical observations that grab but never quiet hold for long enough.

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