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Keston Cobblers Club

Almost Home TRICOLOUR. CD/DL/LP Sometimes, you just want music to make you happy. Step up to the plate Keston Cobblers Club. Not that they are frivolous – there is more substance here than on previous album Wildfire – but impossibly infectious choruses, jaunty arrangements and the sense of a band palpably in love with their music is joyously uplifting. The sleeve design is pretty nifty too.

Ben Hunter, Phil Wiggins & Joe Seamons

A Black & Tan Ball TANTAMOUNT. CD/DL “Blues and folk songs do not need preserving – they are preserving us…” That’s a pretty great mission statement and these boys deliver on it in style as they veer from Leadbelly to The Mills Brothers. Do Nothin’ ’Til You Hear From Me drags, but the HunterWiggins partnership of violin/ mandolin and guitar/banjo gets a new surge when Joe Seamons’ flying harmonica comes in.

Daphne’s Flight

Knows Time, Knows Change FLEDG’LING. CD/DL Two decades since their debut, five hardy Brit folk stalwarts – Christine Collister, Melanie Harrold, Julie Matthews, Helen Watson and Chris While – reunite. Amid the tasteful harmonies, delicate arrangements and a scattering of their own soulful material, there are some surprises too – notably the classic Nancy Wilson hit How Glad I Am and a more than decent stab at Elvis Costello’s Shipbuilding.

Ned Roberts

Outside Of My Mind AVELINE. CD/DL This sounds like an early recording by some long-lost 1960s troubadour. Produced by Luther Russell with shades of James Taylor, post-bike crash Dylan and more… yet his guitar work is effective, his voice warm and his laid-back approach engaging, even if his songs follow a onepace strand of lonesome melancholia and morose selfexamination. He’s a brooder, but he’s no Leonard Cohen. CI