PROGRESSIVE FOLK
PAUL SEXTON travels the world in the latest bucolic grab-bag.
Lovers of blues-soul notables The Teskey Brothers, especially those with further appetite for dreamy folk-rock nostalgia, will already be digging guitarist Sam Teskey’s first album in his own name, Cycles (Decca). It’s a delightful solo flight, with banks of harmonies on the opening Love
setting a fragrant tone. One of the more surprising creative shifts of the season, the record evokes echoes of 1960s and 70s experimentation and some distinctly far-out moments, such as the spacey guitar-and-drums instrumental intro to If The Dove Is Sold.
Malcolm MacWatt’s Settler (Gokuhi/Singular Recordings) is a splendid addition to the Scottish singer-songwriter’s catalogue of elegantly turned alt-folk Americana releases.
It’s rooted in acoustic tradition and decorated by some weighty guest appearances by genre heroes such as Laura Cantrell, Gretchen Peters, Eliza Carthy and Kris Drever. What sets the album at the progressive end of traditional is its themes of national identity, and how they’ve been informed by the stories and experiences of the uprooted, especially among Scottish itinerants. Songs like Letter From San Francisco and Ghosts Of Caledonia capture the yearning peregrinations of MacWatt’s forebears.
A Place Like Home is a new self-released five-tracker by Mr Alec Bowman_Clarke, whom we featured here last year with his debut album I Used To Be Sad & Then I Forgot.
This latest EP reflects his newly modified name following his marriage to collaborator Josienne Clarke, who adds clarinet, saxophone and backing vocals. Revered multi-instrumentalist Lukas Drinkwater is also aboard on songs written last year in the early stages of the p-word. Autobiographical touches blend with darkly entertaining, observational acerbity and a deadpan vocal style that recalls Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and even Chris Difford.
Brooklyn native Steve Gunn has packed plenty of styles into 15 years of recording, and many are on display on Other You
(Matador). Recorded in LA with seasoned producer Rob Schnapf, it features input from Bridget St John, Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore among others. Acoustic folk, blues and experimental elements peep through in a tranquil, uniformly elegant tableau, and atmospheric guitar and synth washes seep into pieces like Circuit Rider and Reflection.
In the reissue department, the ever-dependable Talking Elephant label weigh in with a 2021 remaster from the jazz-rock end of town. Circus were the first band to feature sax and flute stalwart Mel Collins, later of King Crimson among many other addresses. Their solitary, self-titled 1969 LP was half new material by Collins and half hip(pie) covers of The Beatles’ Norwegian Wood (in which the wood has clearly grown wild and free), Tim Hardin’s Don’t Make Promises and, to underscore that jazz element, Charles Mingus’ II BS. A lesser-known but interesting entry in the early days of this thing we call prog.