So today we start a new Top 10 feature, to find the best UK Americana album as voted by our writers – and we are up for the challenge and the weeks of bickering which lie ahead!. Here is AUK writer John Lee to start us off.
The task of selecting the best UK americana albums might on the surface feel like an easy one. It isn’t. There is a lot to think about here and, as this series progresses, it might throw up questions about the nature of americana in the UK and the different roots it has from North America. Certainly, the skin between americana and folk feels thinner and even more porous.
But I am first up, so will avoid too much belly button browsing. I am expecting to look at forthcoming lists and have several faceplant moments. In other words, I know I will have missed something obvious. There are also many artists where another album might have been chosen and, of course, scores of artists who have been discarded. I will readily admit that the albums as a collection say just as much about where I approach the world of americana from. Anyway, here is the list.
Number 10: Peter Bruntnell Journey to the Sun (2021)
Peter Bruntnell has always struck me as an artist who understands that music doesn’t have to mean choosing a particular sound and sticking to it. Journey to the Sun is a thoughtful and powerful album, but what makes it particularly interesting is the diversity within it.
It begins quietly. Dandelion is a gentle, almost meditative opening, before the brilliant tunefulness of Lucifer Morning Star reminds us that Bruntnell can write a melody that stays with you. Runaway Car finds something profound in the everyday, with the simple observation, “Making the same mistakes, over and over again”, carrying more weight than its apparent simplicity suggests.
Elsewhere, Wild Mountain Thyme leans into classic folk, while Heart of Straw quietly pulls at the heart. Dharma Liar takes us somewhere deeper, while The Antwerp Effect and Moon Committee push the music into more experimental territory.
I have had Peter Bruntnell on my stereo consistently for a number of years, but Journey to the Sun is the album that seemed to stay on the turntable longest. Perhaps that is because it is so wonderfully unshowy. The songs gradually work their way into you: poignant, often quiet, sometimes playful and consistently tuneful. Bruntnell takes a blend of styles and turns them into something that feels entirely natural. It just sounds like Peter Bruntnell, which is a very good thing.
Number 9: Beth Orton Sugaring Season (2012)
Beth Orton’s Sugaring Season sits somewhere in the middle of her arc from the fusion of rock, jazz and singer songwriter sounds of her earlier recordings to the more ethereal brilliance of her recent work. She had me when she first opened her mouth. There is a beauty and a catch in Orton’s voice that draws me in, a slight fragility that makes even the most assured performance feel emotionally exposed.
Magpie is restrained and quietly beautiful, a song about struggle, uncertainty and finding a way through. “I do not know what to tell you / I do not know what to say to you” feels almost helpless, before the song gradually finds its resolve, “I won’t turn back / I’ve seen the sign”. The strength comes from the restraint.
That sense of finding hope without pretending the struggle hasn’t happened runs through the album. Candles offers simple encouragement, while its images of sun, wind and morning light suggest that even when the sun isn’t shining, it is still there. The rolling guitar of Call Me the Breeze gives the album movement, while Last Leaves of Autumn is a wonderfully simple meditation on change, love and renewal, “I’m hanging on like the last leaves of autumn / But I’m coming through like the first shoots of spring”.
What I love about Sugaring Season is the way everything works together. The voice, lyrics and spacious arrangements create an album that feels intimate without becoming claustrophobic. Orton doesn’t force the emotion. She lets it emerge gradually, and somehow that makes it all the more powerful.
Number 8: Frank Turner England Keep My Bones (2011)
Frank Turner might be an interesting inclusion because his music sits at the point where folk, punk and americana collide. England Keep My Bones contains the singalong quality that has always been such an important part of Turner’s appeal, but underneath those anthems there is real emotional and lyrical power.
These are songs that invite togetherness. They make you want to sing along, whether you are in a crowded venue with thousands of other people or, perhaps less impressively, in the shower.
Peggy Sang the Blues begins with a dream and some simple words of wisdom, “It doesn’t matter where you come from / It matters where you go”. Turner doesn’t leave it as easy inspiration, though. The song is full of mortality, regret and the possibility of wasting a life, before turning towards hope, “Better times are coming / Better times ahead”.
Then there is I Still Believe, almost a mission statement for Turner. He believes in songs, live music and the community that forms around them, in “guitars and drums and desperate poetry” and the possibility that everyone can find a song for the times they have lost and the times they have won.
I have had the privilege of seeing Turner numerous times, and there is something genuinely moving about standing in a crowd who know and adore every word of every song. England Keep My Bones captures some of that feeling. I Am Disappeared shows another side, urgent and restless, filled with dreams of escape but much more reflective than the driving music initially suggests.
England Keep My Bones understands that music is not just about the songs themselves. It is about people gathering together to sing them. They don’t simply ask to be listened to. They ask you to join in.
Number 7: Laura Marling Short Movie (2015)
Choosing one Laura Marling album feels almost unfair. For me, Short Movie has the edge because it feels a little fuller and richer, with a musical confidence that allows the songs to expand without losing their intimacy. Like all great albums it also has a deeply personal connection. This is a record that got me through a challenging time and reminds me of a very important relationship.
The album explores the tension between independence and loneliness, but neither is presented as something simply to be embraced or escaped. Warrior is a striking example. “I can’t be your horse anymore / You’re not the warrior I’ve been looking for”, sounds almost defiant, but there is pain underneath the decision. It is independence, but independence hard won.
There is similar uncertainty in False Hope, although the music has a more urgent, guitar led energy. “Is it still okay that I don’t know how to be alone?” sits uneasily alongside the swagger of the music. That juxtaposition between musical confidence and emotional doubt runs throughout Short Movie.
I Feel Your Love is deceptively simple, its guitar carrying the song before strings swirl around it, while Don’t Let Me Bring You Down again contrasts musical swagger with lyrical uncertainty. And then the title track gathers much of the album’s emotional tension into one song: expansive and threaded with haunting strings, but at its heart Marling’s brilliant voice.
Marling doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, the music gives the questions space, moving between intimacy and grandeur, doubt and swagger, vulnerability and strength. It is an album about finding your way alone without pretending that being alone is always easy.
Number 6: Ethan Johns and The Black Eyed Dogs Silver Liner (2015)
Ethan Johns probably needs to be included in a list of UK americana simply because of the influence he has had. The list of artists he has produced or worked with is jaw-droppingly impressive. Fortunately, he is also a brilliant songwriter and performer in his own right.
The title track immediately establishes the album’s musical credentials, with Johns’ guitar bringing a strong Neil Young flavour to a lyrically mysterious song. There is something cinematic about the woman who “carries black flowers / one in each hand”, her white dress blowing in the cold wind as “she’s going to leave us”.
The Sun Hardly Rises tells a simpler story of greed going bad, with some fabulous pedal steel from the brilliant BJ Cole. Johns knows when to let the instruments speak, and the playing is never simply there to demonstrate how good the musicians are.
The piano-led It Won’t Always Be This Way offers light to someone struggling with their own thoughts. Its reassurance is gentle rather than glib. Sometimes the most hopeful thing you can say is simply that this moment will pass.
Open Your Window builds towards an almost epic conclusion, while I’m Coming Home strips things back again, “I don’t know what I’m searching for / Could be there is nothing more / But I believe / I’m coming home”. There is no grand revelation, just the decision to keep believing in something.
I saw Ethan Johns live when this album came out and he blew me away. There was musical brilliance, obviously, but also real presence and commitment. Silver Liner makes clear that this isn’t simply a hugely accomplished producer stepping out from behind the mixing desk. Johns is a songwriter and performer with something of his own to say.
Number 5: King Creosote and Jon Hopkins Diamond Mine (2012)
This is probably the most leftfield choice on the list, leaning towards alternative folk rather than what we might traditionally describe as americana. It is also interesting to wonder whether americana can have a Scottish voice. Here I think it can. Diamond Mine takes familiar traditions and finds new ways of telling stories, and does that brilliantly.
King Creosote and Jon Hopkins come from very different musical traditions, yet their collaboration creates something extraordinary. The songs sit within an ethereal, almost dreamlike landscape, while the lyrics remain grounded in ordinary lives. The music can feel otherworldly, but the stories never do.
I first really appreciated Diamond Mine late at night. It seems to occupy that liminal space between sleep and dreams, where things don’t quite need to make sense in the usual way.
John Taylor’s Month Away begins with simple guitar and Kenny Anderson singing about a man spending a month at sea, ten miles east of Aberdeen, alongside a dozen men and thirty days of “shattered boyhood dreams”. It is an ordinary story, but the details give it a weight much bigger than the words themselves.
Bats in the Attic turns to growing older, memory and regret, while Bubble brings a fuller sound but still seems to drift. Then there is the simple beauty of Your Young Voice: “It’s your young voice that’s keeping me holding on / To my dull life” is hardly an obvious declaration of romance, but there is something deeply moving about its honesty.
It is difficult to know exactly where Diamond Mine sits within americana. If americana is only defined by geography or particular musical conventions, it probably doesn’t belong here. If it is about storytelling, emotional honesty and finding something universal in the details of ordinary lives, it is difficult to imagine a better fit.
Number 4: David Ford I Sincerely Apologise for All the Trouble I Have Caused (2005)
There are albums where you admire the songwriting and albums where the songs seem to get under your skin. I Sincerely Apologise for All the Trouble I Have Caused belongs firmly in both categories.
David Ford’s great strength is emotional honesty. There is humour, tenderness, anger and, importantly, hope. He can write about heartbreak without wallowing in it and despair without allowing it to have the final word.
I Don’t Care What You Call Me begins as a simple piano led song before strings, harmonica, bass, drums and backing vocals gradually transform it into something much bigger. Then there is State of the Union, the breakthrough song that announced just what Ford was capable of. “We are lost” becomes both a personal and political statement, while the anger is balanced by his sharp sense of humour.
There is warmth alongside the anger. Cheer Up (You Miserable Fuck) manages to be simultaneously heartbreaking, funny and strangely comforting, while What Would You Have Me Do? finds extraordinary beauty in its simplicity.
Twenty years on, the songs retain their emotional impact because Ford understands something fundamental about songwriting: the more specific and honest the emotion, the more universal it can become. He takes singer songwriter storytelling, roots music and rock and makes them entirely his own. Some records become part of the music you listen to; others become part of the way you understand music. This is one of the latter.
Number 3: Foy Vance The Joy of Nothing (2013)
Some albums seem to take possession of you for a while. The Joy of Nothing was one of those records for me. For a while, I was dangerously addicted to it. It would be the last album I played at night and the first in the morning. I suspect, too, it was a way of sublimating a difficult time. But what a thing of beauty to get lost in.
From the pounding piano that opens Closed Hand, Full of Friends, Vance demonstrates just how well he can write a tune. It is powerful, anthemic and wonderfully uplifting, but there is substance beneath the immediacy. The song moves from feeling “dead in the water” towards rediscovering belonging, eventually finding hope in friendship and human connection.
The title track offers a quieter version of the same idea. Vance’s falsetto sits beautifully above music that slowly builds around him, while the lyric finds significance in apparently ordinary things: rain, birds, an evening sky, a baby’s cry. Joy of Nothing is a lovely song about noticing what is already there.
At Least My Heart Was Open is a relationship song in which the narrator makes no claim to innocence, “I know I fucked it up sometimes”. What remains important is that he tried, that his heart was open. You and I finds similar strength in connection, while the darker Feel For Me allows Vance’s voice to carry the intensity. Then Regarding Your Lover finishes with the beautifully understated “Yours faithfully, friend”.
Perhaps that mixture explains why The Joy of Nothing became such a companion for me. Put it on when you are happy and it takes you somewhere; put it on when you are miserable and it seems to understand why. For a period of my life, I apparently needed it morning and night. There are worse addictions to have.
Number 2: Afterlight Afterlight (2021)
This is Thea Gilmore performing as Afterlight. This is Thea Gilmore at her very best. Afterlight is a powerful and deeply moving album, and one that doesn’t shy away from brutality. Gilmore has always had an extraordinary ability to look directly at difficult things, but here that honesty feels particularly intense.
It begins with Of All the Violence I Have Known, a spoken piece that is unflinching, chilling and extraordinarily brave. It establishes an album concerned with pain, coercion, control and the damage people can do to one another. But Afterlight is not simply an album of despair. There is catharsis, resistance and, eventually, the possibility of reclaiming something that has been lost.
There is wonderful music along the way. Friendly Little Heart Attack has a glorious rolling guitar and Gilmore’s voice is simply beautiful. 26 Letters strips things back further, while Stain is perhaps one of the most complete songs on the album, lyrically dark but possessing an almost irresistible pop sensibility.
Spotlight is extraordinary. A song about control and the struggle to escape it, it gradually transforms fear into resistance. “Here’s a razor wire kiss / A murderous love song” is a typically striking Gilmore image, but what stays with me is the movement in the song. This is not simply someone describing what has happened to them; it is someone beginning to find their way out.
Chekhov’s Gun has an almost ethereal quality, unfolding more like a piece of classical music than a conventional singer songwriter arrangement. Dead Light is beautifully sung, while Parallax is clever and elusive. Towards the end, Vespering becomes so delicate that it feels as though the song itself might disappear, before Last closes the album as a poem.
There is musical brilliance throughout Afterlight, but more than that there is the sense that these songs mean something. This is an album about what has been done to someone, but it refuses to allow that to be the end of the story. There is pain here, certainly, but there is also transformation. There is the hope. And ultimately, there is a woman reclaiming her own voice.
Number 1: Danny & The Champions of the World You Are Not a Stranger Here (2024)
You Are Not a Stranger Here is an epic of a record. Danny Wilson has always had a remarkable ability to combine the personal with the expansive, but here the musical vision feels particularly ambitious. This is americana with its horizons pushed wider, with lush arrangements and a sense of scale that never loses sight of the people at the heart of the songs.
From Talking a Good Game, there is a sense that this album is looking to go big. The guitar playing is wonderfully spacious, at times bringing to mind David Gilmour at his best. Yet beneath that musical ambition is Wilson admitting that, despite talking a good game, he is still trying to work things out like the rest of us: grand music accompanying very human uncertainty.
And then there is Kicking Tyres. Nearly nine minutes long and, for me, not a note wasted. A few piano chords open the song before guitar and fretless bass gradually broaden the soundscape. There is something almost cosmic about it. The music seems to be looking beyond the horizon, complex without becoming wilfully experimental, and every time I hear it I find something new.
The instrumental Last Exit sustains the atmosphere before I’m in Love changes the mood, driven by great bass and guitar and wonderfully quirky writing. Future Past is more reflective and confessional, while In Search of Koji provides another instrumental interlude. Even The Robot Cries, with its slap bass and distinctly untraditional take on what an americana record is supposed to sound like, somehow belongs here. The Poetics of Space, with its lovely acoustic guitar, offers another moment of reflection.
And what a conclusion Sooner or Later is. Again, the scale is epic, but some of its most affecting moments come from just a few piano notes returning as a beautifully simple motif. Around them the song expands, the guitar soars and Wilson reflects on human fallibility with characteristic honesty. Sooner or later our disguises fail; sooner or later we reveal ourselves to be imperfect, vulnerable and simply human. There is something both melancholy and enormously comforting about that.
Perhaps that is why You Are Not a Stranger Here sits at number one. It captures much of what I love about americana in the first place. The music can be huge and adventurous, but the stories remain human. These aren’t perfect people living perfect lives. There is sadness without defeat, regret and uncertainty alongside love, friendship and the possibility of carrying on.
An epic record but ultimately a deeply human one. And perhaps that is what the title has been telling us all along: You Are Not a Stranger Here.
