What have we got this month that’s good in the world of folk song? There’s old songs done new ways, and there’s new songs done old ways. There’s the experimental, and there’s the discovery of what love is. And there’s musicianship of the highest calibre. Something for everyone – as it should be – and a classic folk track from a band that went away…but we always suspected it wouldn’t be forever.
Red Thread are a band from the heart of Minneapolis who delve into a wide ranging folk heritage, exploring and exploding Yiddish, Balkan, Irish, and Scandinavian vocal traditions. Always loojking to push their boundaries further out they’ve collaborated on this version of Wild Mountain Thyme with hip hop producer Lazerbeak. Don’t worry – it’s cool, as frontwoman Sarah Larsson says, “Lazerbeak turns this folk song about love lost into a rolling, upbeat journey. I feel like this track is the soundtrack to a travel montage in the movie of my life.”
Sticking closely with traditional singing, although the song is not actually so old, we find The Wellermen singing about sailing the seas and taking American ships for their cargos. Barrett’s Privateers is taken from the group’s new 1778 EP, it was originally written by Stan Rodgers and The Wellermen’s Luke taylor explains how it came to be on the new recording: “Barrett’s is one from my favorite artist, Stan Rogers, so I definitely pushed the guys to learn it! It’s an easy singalong and we love to sing it with an audience – it only adds to the song. The story behind the song is pretty heavy, but the melody keeps it fun and entertaining. The premise is like… a brutal reminder of the gap between expectations (cruise the seas, fire no guns, shed no tears) and reality (broken man, whole crew dead, six years to get back home).”
Moving very much to a more modern form of folk, Julinko‘s Skin Dress is full of haunting imagery and a mixture of sounds that make for an eerie soundscape. It’s taken from the album Nebula, and takes the form almost of an incantation as it peels back the layers to explore what it is to be a human being. It sits somewhere along the axis of where Aldous Harding meets a disturbed nightmare. We think you’ll like it.
We’re always more than happy to bring you, dear readers, something totally new – and this next song is the debut recording and first single in advance of an EP coming later this year from Marianne Joyce. Hailing from the edge of Dartmoor, Marianne Joyce seeks to make music that has stick in the mind melodies that are as catchy as the choruses you’d hear in the pubs of Joyce Country in rural west Ireland, where her grandmother is from. Her songs take as topics love, grief, south west stories, queerness, and a bit of life’s absurdity. Inventing Something is, Joyce says, a tribute to the queer love stories that have been lost to history.
Someone else with a debut release upcoming is Sam Grassie who will be releasing Where Two Hawks Fly on Broadside Hack Recordings (an emerging label of excellence whom we’ve mentioned before). Grassie’s music is defined by a distinctive finger-picking style reminiscent of his lifelong hero Bert Jansch, and the album compiles traditional songs from his Scottish roots, all reinterpreted with original guitar arrangements. Here’s the title track, which is just stunning.
And so, as night follows day, we come to the end of the new Folk tunes, and we arrive at the classic folk tune. And 2026 is a notable year, since it is twenty years since the debut album Burlesque from Bellowhead and it is also ten years since they set out on their final tour. Only, thankfully, it wasn’t – they will be on tour again this November. And if you can’t wait that long, the duo of Spiers and Boden are on tour right now, with these dates remaining. Here they are at their live best on Cold Blows The Wind, featuring the much missed Paul Sartin.
