Browsing Tag

Folk Singer Songwriter

From tragic inevitability, hauntingly filmic beauty is born in Rico Friebe’s single, This Day

Posted on 23 December 2022

Folk singer-songwriter, Rico Friebe, has unveiled the hauntingly filmic second single from his upcoming debut album, Word Value. Born from tragedy and hope, the vividly redolent single, This Day, explores the inevitability of the days we fear the most, alluding to our inability to avert discourses we are compelled to run from.

There is a profound grace in the alchemic vocal layering that spills soul across the stabbing minor piano keys that torridly flurry through the soundscape to reflect the phenomena we have to accept we can’t overcome. In concept and execution alike, This Day is a masterful piece that has left us with plenty of anticipation over the debut album.

Listen to This Day on Spotify from December 23rd. Await the alchemy in the debut album, which is primed for release in early 2023.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Chloe Southern painted the portrait of a morally grey romantic in her immersive folk single, Oil & Water

Posted on 4 December 2022

The 22-year-old neo-folk singer-songwriter and producer, Chloe Southern, goes beyond making honesty her brand through the motto, “the more alone I feel in an experience, the more I know I need to write about it”.

The Boulder, CO-born, Brooklyn-residing artist is fresh from the release of her debut EP, Last Man on Earth, which contains five singles, all orchestrated to give a confidant to anyone drifting along the same wavelength. One of the standout singles, Oil & Water, is a quiescent aching lullaby. Atop gentle acoustic guitar strings that weave rich Elliott Smith-Esque melodies, Southern finds her resounding voice as she heightens the emotions to the nth degree through the climactically gentle vocal progressions.

All too often, singer-songwriters paint themselves as flawless protagonists in their own stories. Southern switched the narrative by creating a morally grey character of herself in the single that traverses how she stole someone from the arms of another. But she pulls the romanticism back around by alluding to her ability to love him like no other. We’re officially rooting for her in the romantic saga.

Oil & Water is now available to stream on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Chloe Southern – Naked: Intimately Confessional Neo-Folk-Pop

Posted on 2 December 2022

Taken from her debut EP, Last Man on Earth, Chloe Southern’s indie neo-folk-meets-pop single, Naked, strips emotionally bare. The urgency of the distinctive vocal delivery paired with the intimacy in the confessionalism makes for a powerful listening experience. Anyone that has ever wrestled with entropy to feel viscerally again will be consumed by the conceptual score, which runs through the dim views that get dimmer in the wake of loneliness.

Narrating how she hates coffee because she only makes it for herself and the smell of snow which takes her to places where she finds a lost love’s shadow proves how easily our perceptions of elemental to inane things can change over time and with the absence of the co-creators of our stories before a chapter closes.

Through and through, it is a stunning single from the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter which deserves to complement the next heartbreakingly cinematic Blockbuster.

Naked is now available to stream on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Yunger – Let There Be Hope: A Compassionately Impassioned Folk Playlist Staple

Posted on 1 December 2022

Folk singer-songwriter Yunger refused to let all hope be lost in his achingly impassioned single, Let There Be Hope. The single surpassed the gravitas and sincerity in folk hits from Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers as he went all-in with compassion as he acknowledged the darkness that we can all succumb to when it feels like the silver linings are always out of sight.

After laying out unconditional understanding, he offers an olive branch out of entropy which has become increasingly more prevalent in the wake of tragedies that seem to be dragging innocent lives back to the dark ages. If more souls were as pure as Yunger’s and we all had his eloquently poetic way with words, our existence would be so much brighter. Notably, he’s Australia’s answer to Frank Turner.

If you love Let There Be Hope, be sure to check out his latest album, Of Hope and Dreams, which was released on vinyl on October 1st.

The official music video for Let There Be Hope is available on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Succumb to the cinematic nostalgia in Molly Murphy’s folk-pop single, I Miss When We Drove Shitty Cars

Posted on 30 November 2022

Taken from her phenomenal EP, Were You Digging for Some Deeper Meaning? Molly Murphy’s nostalgia-soaked folk serenade, I Miss When We Drove Shitty Cars, will drive you right back to the days when it was okay if everything wasn’t Instagram-worthy.

With all the grace and beguile of Joni Mitchell, this sepia-tinged stripped-back single allows Murphy’s celestial vocal timbre to float atop the quiescently cinematic melodies that lull you into a state of calm before the orchestral chamber strings chorally caress the non-lexical harmonies that will make you Dream Baby Dream.

The NYC indie-folk singer-songwriter is a soulful force to be reckoned with. Watch this space. Or better yet, succumb to the choral mesmerism.

I Miss When We Drove Shitty Cars is now available to stream on Spotify and purchase on Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Folk singer-songwriter Steve Andrews reached the pinnacle of feel-good music with ‘Climb Through a Rainbow’

Posted on 14 November 2022
Climb Through A Rainbow by Steve Andrews

When Steve Andrews, AKA the Bard of Ely, isn’t prising our eyes open to the disasters we create in our destructive-by-design lifestyles, playing Glastonbury or being lauded by the NME and Nicky Wire, he’s spilling soul across the airwaves through singles such as Climb Through a Rainbow.

With Pixies-Esque shimmering reverb and birdsong as the backdrop to his ardently animated acoustic guitar and unlimitedly happy vocals that bring alive the song that was inspired and composed in his friend’s nursery in Cardiff, it is impossible not to get swept up in the euphoric energy of the single.

Climb Through a Rainbow definitively proves you’re never too old to benefit from the simple pleasures of authentically feel-good music, which makes no bones about being on the silly side of wild. Honestly, I’ve got happy tears as I write this review. Nothing has touched my soul this much, ironically, since Nicky Wire’s solo album.

Stream and purchase Climb Through a Rainbow on Bandcamp now.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

In the wake of trajedy, Alexander Joseph found the beauty in his piano score, Waiting for You

Posted on 11 November 2022

The UK-based singer-songwriter, Alexander Joseph, created an intricately ornate balance of faith, regret and grief in the piano version of his single, Waiting For You, which captured the complexity of the emotions following his grandmother’s passing.

If you know how it feels to know that someone is at peace while they endured the opposite amongst us and for those torrid emotions to be confounded by guilt for not being more supportive while we had the opportunity, Waiting for You will weigh down on you like a tonne of bricks.

Yet, there’s ample solace within the pure soul of the vocals, which anticipate reconnection while the lyrics vow to go on in a way that will minimise regret when our time comes. By blending striking minor keys with major keys in the progressions to brighten the score, Waiting for You unravels to sonically amplify the message that even in the wake of tragedy, life can never be black and white.

Alexander Joseph’s commitment to orchestrating uplifting heartfelt messages is seen throughout his body of work, plenty of which has been lauded by BBC Introducing. When he’s not enriching our musical culture, he coaches the British Wheelchair Tennis Programme. My faith in humanity is officially restored.

Waiting for You will officially release across all major platforms on November 11th. Hear it here.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Peppler lulled us into optimistic gratitude with his dream folk serenade, Blessed

Posted on 9 November 2022

Creating ample anticipation for his upcoming dream folk album releasing in early 2023, the acoustic folk artist Peppler exposed his old soul in his lead single, Blessed.

Entwining the warm vintage tones of 60s and 70s folk with a modern signature dream pop sound that only Peppler can call his own, Blessed is effortlessly efficacious in beckoning you into the beguiling grace of the release. Which needed no more than accordant acoustic guitars, a harmonica and Peppler’s consolingly dulcet tones to lull you into gratified catharsis.

Lyrically, Blessed optimistically reinforces the message that we are blessed within ourselves and that trust that it will all work out is never misplaced. It’s a simple message, but one worth reiterating, given our tendency to curse every downfall and diminish everything positive. Notably, artistically thriving within pure, simplistic minimalism is Peppler’s gift, one that he’s worked tirelessly to perfect after eight years of performing live and crafting albums with various projects.

Watch Blessed live from the G7 Recording Studio on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

 

Charlie O’Brien walks us through dreamy jazz pop nostalgia on ‘Ingrim Street’

Posted on 20 October 2022

Taken from his forthcoming fifth album, Fire and Foam, Charlie O’Brien’s mellow pop folk serenade, Ingrim Street, is a jazzy amble through sepia-tinged memories that allow you to revisit your own sentimental destinations of nostalgia.

His fifth album is Charlie O’Brien’s first departure from his trad Irish roots. The melodious ease of the dreamy soundscape has no obvious connotations of experimentalism through its delicious entrenchment in unbridled soul, noted through the lofty 50s pop vocals and the brass section, which came as a courtesy from the Mexico-hailing artists Luis Zautla and Alejandro Cristobal.

In a time of such rampant disillusion, records such as these are worth their weight in gold. We can’t wait to see where this album takes O’Brien and his achingly beautiful talent.

Ingrim Street will be available to stream from October 20th, along with the rest of his album, Fire and Foam. Catch it on SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

 

Marlais looks ‘Out of the Window’ in his quiescently beguiling folk tale

Posted on 17 October 2022
Stream Of Forms by Marlais

Stuttgart, Germany-residing folk artist Marlais takes inspiration from the deep roots of English and Irish folk for his quiescently beguiling aural tales that transcend the commercialisation of Folk to outpour intimately uninhibited emotion.

His latest hymnal single, Out of the Window, is an arresting invitation to lose yourself in the narrative, which unfolds to the minimalist folk instruments and harmonically ethereal electronic motifs. It’s gospel for the impious, a triumph in connectivity through the ambient relay of sincere emotion that carries as much through the vulnerable vocal timbre as it does through the celestially sombre instrumentation.

Out of the Window, taken from his forthcoming LP, Stream of Forms, is now available to stream and purchase via Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast