Belinda O’Hooley’s come a long way since winning Stars In Their Eyes impersonating Annie Lennox. Since then she’s taken up piano, started writing, released solo album Music Is My Silence, had a touring duo stint with fellow lesbian songwriter Al Start and spent three years and two albums as part of Rachel Unthank & The Winterset. Since departing three years ago she’s toured with former Winterset colleague Jackie Oates and has now teamed up with her personal and professional partner, vocally contrastive Yorkshire songwriter Heidi Tidow.

Their debut album, built around their voices and O’Hooley’s upright piano with occasional embellishments from violin, guitar and string quartet, is a sparse, poetic and heavily intense affair that, much concerned with mortality and featuring several avian images, sets their folk roots in neo-classical arrangements.

Flight Of The Petrel provides a downbeat, solemn eco-themed introduction with images of empty nest, withered branches, dead flowers, winged harbingers of doom, dying bees, and references to nursing homes and the cancer industry.

Despite urgent percussive piano line and Cormac Byrne’s experimental bodhran rhythm (a musical homage to Philip Glass, apparently), things aren’t much cheerier on O’Hooley’s All Stand In Line, a song seemingly about how life for women (or at least farmer’s wives) is about fetching, feeding and breeding. Relieving the gloom with chiming piano notes and handclaps, the pair duet on the tenderly romantic Shelter Me while, rendered acapella, they get splendidly silly for 35 seconds of the trad children’s ololold song Banjololo before hitting reflective mood for a lilting arrangement (featuring Oates on fiddle) of Spancil Hill, a song O’Hooley learned from her father about the plight and homesickness of Irish immigrants to America.

Such unbridled jollity is short-lived however. Featuring a fragile intro by a care home resident singing When I Grow Too Old To Dream over a tolling piano note, Too Old To Dream offers a bittersweet snapshot of an elderly former dancer shunted off to residential care, the meld of violin, piano and starkly lush harmonies of Hidden From The Sun present ‘bold brazen Joni, a childhood erased’ and, inspired by Chopin’s piano etudes and the WWI execution of war nurse Edith Cavell, the equally doomy anti-war Que Sera offers a God deserted world, bereft of birdsong where the air is "thick and smells of dying."

There’s a brief lapse into sunny positivity with Beautiful Danger, a simple voice and rippling piano celebration of venturing out of the safety cocoon, taking relationship chances and finding ‘joyful terror’ with a stranger. But then comes One More Xmas, a dour response to Chris Rea’s Driving Home For Christmas about how we screw up our lives as we get older, lovers lost, dysfunctional relationships "with nothing but our fears keeping us together" and O’Hooley wishing she could be little again and "spend Xmas with my mum".

It was a festive commission by Radio Leeds and, perhaps understandably, apparently never broadcast.

Just to set the seal on things, they end in acapella mode again with the cheerily titled Cold & Stiff, their gay ‘rebel song’ which, dedicated to Chumbawamba, sings of society’s judgement tide and moral clouds that keep the spirit ‘down, worn away and perished.’

It’s a superbly executed chamber folk album that fully deserves to add lustre to the Huddersfield duo’s reputation and pave the way for a lengthy career, just make sure you’re not on depressants when you listen.

Last heard collaborating with Neil MacColl on the Two album, the Newcastle based songstress now returns with her new label debut and a belated follow up to 2007's Leave To Remain.

Despite the fact that this is her seventh solo release and she has a scrapbook full of critical praise, she still remains something of a cult. Finding her on peak form with an urgency and immediacy that comes from not allowing the musicians to hear the material before they went into the studio, and setting a limit of four takes, hopefully this will change matters.

Opening with 50 White Lines, a song about long distance driving with a rhythm to match as a voice counts from 1 to 50, it's a gently reflective and often melancholic affair with songs contemplating the dawning and dying of love, rich in delicate fingerpicked guitar and her shy softly breathed vocals.

The cold snap of Winter Is Sharp finds her exploring traditional folk with a spare, accordion, percussion and ukulele arrangement that should sit nicely with Unthanks fans, but otherwise, save for certain Nick Drake colours, there's more of a soft, brushed pop flavour in evidence; Wanting & Waiting nodding to Waterloo Sunset in its yearning and underpinning melody with Just Leave's disintegrating relationship and the similar themed glockenspiel tinkling and suitably wispy Smoke both fragile gossamer waltzing delights.

Stretching out, she also slips into a late night jazz cellar vibe with the whispery Cream Of The Crop and the resonant piano backed, icily atmospheric, almost spoken There Are Keys before Noble Guesses returns to folksier climes and hints of the young Joni Mitchell as she sings about the connotations of different types of absences.

Having spent the rest of the album in leisurely mood, she gets positively spritely for the bass led Little Lesson with its handclaps and almost pass the dutchie rhythmic stomp before bringing things to a close with Up North, a regret tinged and Pentangle shaded love song to the Northern home where she wishes she could spent more time.

The title, of course, refers to the stage in pregnancy - often referred to as flutters - when the foetus first shows signs of individual life. On the evidence here, mother and child are both doing exceedingly well.

Headed up by Orcadian folk singer-guitarist Gawain Erland Cooper, the trio also comprises drummer and keyboards player David Nock from McCartney?s The Fireman project and, pricking up indie interest, Simon Tong, formerly guitarist with The Verve and sometime member of The Good, The Band, The Queen.

According to him the band are "Pentangle meets Ennio Morricone meets Love meets 13th Floor Elevators meets Joe Meek." So, that?ll be retro psych folk then, gathered together on a self-titled debut album where they mingle self-penned material with updated and deconstructed material from the trad songbook.

Thus, for example, Love Is A Killing Thing takes a song collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, splices it with a Seeger/MacColl chorus and casts it as raging electric indie folk rock while The Derby Ram?s unsettling taken from life account of teenager Shaun Dykes whose suicide plunge from a city car park was filmed on the mobile phones of the crowd urging him to jump is a far cry the original tale of a bovine giant.

Elsewhere the Lee Hazelwood does spaghetti western sounding My Name Is Carnival is a cover of the Jackson C Frank song from which they took their name, Disturbed In The Morning provides a spooked acoustic setting for Leonard Cohen?s poem, The Echoing Green gives William Blake a rolling folk electronic beats groove, and Tramps And Hawkers transforms from the Celtic chestnut beloved of The Dubliners into a slightly drugs queasy shanty.

The Meek inspired 60s garage colours alluded to by Tong are well to the fore on the likes of The Sweeter The Girl, The Harder The Fall and Gentle Gwen and while none of them come out and say it, you?ll hear at lot of The Doors, keyboardist Ray Manzarek especially, dotted around. most notably on Trouble In Mind and Everything Came Too Easy.

Kaiser Chief followers will also note that You Don?t Have To Be Lonely?s chorus is a brazen cop from I Predict A Riot put through a Stranglers mixer. Still, I guess that?s part and parcel of the song collecting folk tradition!

Unlikely to loom large in any purist?s collection alongside the Carthys, Coppers and Watersons, but those who would like Jim Moray to be more Jim Morrison will love it.

Swaggery Southern country soul burns out of the speakers on the sassy View From Above, the opening track of Robin’s fifth album. A former touring member of both Lindsey Buckingham and Meredith Brook’s bands, the deserves to be known as more than some side(wo)man and, produced by John Carter Cash (son of JC and JC), this might be the one that opens her up to a wider audience.

Blending acoustic and gutsy rock n roll on songs that deal with the heat of passion and pride, as numbers such as Bow & Arrow, the choppy Clean Getaway and Rumor illustrate, the blues provide the underpinning spirit. But, to show the range of her musicianship, PJ Harvey’s This Is Love becomes Skynyrd-like hard rock while the (naturally) Eastern European flavoured Everybody Falls In Love In Prague provides a showcase for her prowess on classical acoustic guitar.

As the solo instrumental CHR Number 137 confirms, she’s probably a better guitarist than she is a vocalist, but she delivers the sass and the sensitivity with equally persuasive conviction and her slinky and sensually soulful cover of vintage Orbison hit Dream Baby is positively goosebump inducing.

Not to be confused with the leftist political writer, this is the ex wife of long serving Elton John sideman Davey Johnstone. When they divorced in the mid 70s, she packed in her musical career (she co-wrote three songs on his solo album and sang on A Lovely Day) and moved into film and TV set design, working as set dresser on Nic Roeg’s Insignificance and graduating to Art Director on productions for the Children’s Film Unit.

In the late 90s, relocating to Bath she returned to making music, performing around the region and releasing debut album, Learning To Walk. Once again it highlights her clear cut vocals, laid back guitar style, poetic lyrics and melodies that brush together jazz (especially on So Sweet) and folk colours.

If I’m being perfectly honest, it leaves me a bit cold, sounding like something you could hear from a decent support act at folk clubs up and down the country. There’s also a certain middle-aged warm fuzziness to songs like Beloved Child (mum bids teenage child goodbye at the station) and Tired Of The Blues (a stagnating relationship) while, among several songs dealing with emotional tugs, both So Sweet and Phone Box In The Rain involve calls from old or estranged lovers.

The arrangements and the playing are well polished (Mike Silver contributing guitar to All My Love In Vain), and, to these ears at least, undemandingly pleasant background listening. I daresay those who’ve seen her live will be more partisan and, I would say that the finely observed (and best) Mirrors with its urban snapshots of women and girls on the edge of nervous and social breakdown ("Ali sleeps in doorways, Leilo carries a knife, Sonja and her sisters share on small bed at night") suggests a richer seam of subject matter to pursue.

Singer-songwriters of the Saharan desert, the Touareg ex-rebels Tinariwen, birthed distinctive blues grooves - intense and enthralling - now taken up by the young seven-strong Touareg blues-rock band Tamikrest.

Their name "Tamikrest" is Tamashek (the Touareg language) for "union" and "knot" - a symbol for the desert, language and culture which unifies and binds them.

And unified they are. A western band might be considered "tight" but Tamikrest are another thing entirely. The slow-paced caravan of bass-driven rhythms, electric guitars, tunes layered with claps and harmonies punctuated by the ululation of female backing singers (and even echoes of the Eagles and a few reggae beats), become trance-like. Tamikrest's début album "Adagh" (another name for the Touareg) is a wondrous work of hypnotic beauty.

The words of lead vocalist of Ousmane Ag Mossa in the Tamashek language seem totally comprehensible to the Western heart, even if to the ears they aren't. It's the universal voice of pain and passion of struggle, of war, the beauty of the desert, of travelling grooves and - ultimately and hopefully - prayers for freedom. If you need an actual translation, the sleeve notes are also in English and French.

Considering how long these two men have been writing together – ever since they first paired up in the Albion Band nearly two decades ago, in fact - it’s astonishing that Copper, Russet And Gold should turn out to be their first actual duo album project. And while not wishing to seem predictable, the immediate impression is that it sounds pretty much like you’d expect it to. Solidly conceived and soundly constructed songs (words by Hutchings, music by Nicol) embodying a keen feel for detail, keeping one watchful eye on tradition and the other on contemporary life and society. It’s not a concept album, nor is it theme-based as such, but (like humanity itself) it does cover a typically broad range of topics and concerns.

The general feel is warm and reflective, wistfulness tempered with a realisation of realism; there’s nothing especially hard-hitting in terms of commentary, but instead it’s like a genial and charming tour through Ashley and Ken’s rich background and musical history. They treat their subjects with due respect and affection, and yet remain unafraid to season the dishes with more than a dash of twinkling good humour where appropriate. None of these eleven songs are not to like, as it were: it’s just that the best of them stand out ! The Five-Barred Gate is an evocative, if enigmatic gallop through an Old English landscape with a bit of a Bob Pegg feel; Busy Streets gives a voice to the song of a city; Sleeveless Errands recounts the mildly silly pranks traditionally played on apprentices around the time of April Fool’s Day; Drake Went Bowling sports a jaunty bluesy-ragtime setting for the man’s exploits; and Down Down Down sets a childhood reminiscence of supporting a doomed football team to a driving rock’n’roll shuffle beat.

Rather more philosophical and introspective matters aren’t neglected however, with the disc’s centrepiece being a specially commissioned sonnet written by Ashley to celebrate the bi-centenary of Wordsworth’s Upon Westminster Bridge (a reading of part of which prefaces Ken’s setting of Ashley’s own sonnet What God Am I? here). Conversely, I Am Prologue (also reprised as a bookend in the guise of I Am Epilogue) reads better than it sounds sung, perhaps, but as compensation it’s given a cracking electric-muse-style folk-rock setting befitting a true Albion Band anthem (albeit without the latter’s extra instrumentation). And the disc’s title track again couples the spoken word (part of Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal) with a gentle ode to the beauty of Paris.

As with their writing contributions, Ken and Ashley tend to share the singing too for the most part, with backing vocals from Waking The Witch’s Becky Mills on a handful of the songs. Becky takes the lead on two songs: she doesn’t sound entirely suited to Wink Of An Eye, but convinces more on the folkier tale of Raggle Taggle Lad. There’s a slightly odd moment midway through the disc when another guest vocalist, Abbie Lathe, takes centre-stage for Never The Same Again; this swinging jazzy number celebrates the presence of GIs in WWII Britain, yet, exquisitely pointed and delightfully coquettish though Abbie’s performance is, in the end it all has a bit too much of the air of heard-it-all-before.

Instrumentally, the backings are kept relatively uncomplicated, for the most part dominated by Ken’s trademark nifty acoustic work with dashing electric flourishes and selective augmentation from mandolin, keyboard and percussion here and there, all underpinned by Ashley’s firm bass work.

So there we have it: a satisfying sequence of enduring new songs with appealing acoustic-electric backings, tasteful and not over-burdened, and bedecked with reliable musicianship. You can always rely on Ashley to come up with something worthwhile, and this latest project’s another feather in the Tyger’s cap.

Tim Hart, a founder member of Steeleye Span, sadly died last Christmas Eve following a period of treatment for lung cancer (prior to which he’d spent the past couple of decades away from the music industry, only briefly re-emerging to perform with erstwhile duo partner Maddy Prior at 2008’s Electric Proms).

One final project which Tim had desired to see come to fruition was the re-release (for the benefit of his grandchildren) of the recordings of children’s nursery rhymes which he’d made at the beginning of the 1980s, as a gift for his then-three-year-old son, simply because he was appalled at the standard of such releases on offer at the time. The resulting recordings were originally released (on Music For Pleasure if I remember rightly) as My Very Favourite Nursery Rhyme Record and Drunken Sailor & Other Kids’ Songs respectively, and now they’re both remastered and come re-packaged by Park in the best standards of the house.

This splendid two-disc set finds Tim and a reasonably large assortment of musical friends relaxing and enjoying themselves hugely in setting down these definitive, direct and straightforwardly ungimmicky renditions of timeless children’s songs: renditions that (unlike virtually every other recording of such songs) are not an embarrassment for adults to listen to! Using a mix of traditional instruments and modern-day synthesisers in intelligent, lively and refreshing folk-rock-ish arrangements (much of their time, but for the most part not especially dated – and importantly, neither patronising nor kidsy-twee), and paying due attention to the texts while acknowledging and bringing out their (often deeper) folk meanings, Tim here created a delightful pair of records whose contents can actually stand the test of time. Together they present accommodating and captivating - and supremely well-sung - versions of all the time-honoured rhymes, with a few extras that more or less permanently straddle or invade the folk repertoire.

For Steeleye fans, naturally, the special glories of these sessions will be Maddy’s Sing A Song Of Sixpence and the many Tim & Maddy duets including Three Jolly Rogues Of Lynn, The Riddle Song, Lavender’s Blue, Old Woman Tossed Up In A Basket and London Bridge Is Falling Down. And of course the very many selections on which Tim’s own distinctive voice rings out strong and bold. But there’s also some excellent session contributions from Tim’s chums including Melanie Harrold (notably A Fox Jumped Up and her delicious duet with Maddy on Michael Finnigan), Rick Kemp (sterling bass work throughout), Brian Golbey, Bob Johnson, and most especially B.J. Cole on pedal steel, as well as cameo guest appearances from John Kirkpatrick, Davy Spillane and Lea Nicholson. As a first-stage appreciation in a musical upbringing, what more could a child desire?

At present Emily’s name is rightly in the ascendant, for reasons that even a cursory listen to this magnificently beguiling and glamorously scary CD should make abundantly clear. In fact I’m tempted to start this review off provocatively by dubbing Emily "queen of spookyfolk" (a new genre coined by fRoots mag for the Unthanks on its latest cover)!… But no need, for this young folk songstress has already notched up a brilliant CV, from the ranks of the adventurous harmony outfit The Devil’s Interval through to appearances at the Folk Roots, New Routes concerts and warm endorsements from Shirley Collins, and nowadays she’s an equal partner in the trio Rubus.

Here Emily presents on her determinedly personal debut solo record a dozen songs (all but one her own original compositions) which inhabit a genuinely unique landscape, one of spine-chilling magic and strange, often rarefied beauty. She describes the album as "a collection of new songs with old bones: old stories with new skin, drawn from folktales, ballads, dreams and real life"; these are invariably relayed from a female perspective, and couched in tellingly literate imagery while often also incorporating structural elements that hark back to the traditional ballads which formed Emily’s wellspring of creative inspiration. The glamoury, Emily says, is "an enchantment that may reveal beauty where before there was none; (for) those with the glamoury eye see beyond this world"; and yes, there is something distinctly supernatural at work here, a presence which is probably evoked as much by Emily’s own eerie vocal delivery (at the same time almost defiantly childlike and knowingly prescient) as by the actual content of her darkly mysterious ballad-like creations which display deep and often enigmatic resonances of both the ancient and the contemporary.

Even though she utilises only a comparatively small number of accompanying instruments, and then only in sparse scorings, Emily manages to conjure an excitingly rich and yet piquant and cleanly delineated filigree texture to furnish the mystical cloak of sound in which she envelops her songs. Variously, that involves Lucy Farrell’s voice and viola ("on loan" from the Unthanks tour!), "Shee-ite" Rachel Newton‘s harp and voice, cellos from Gabriel Waite and Bellowhead’s Rachael McShane and fiddle from Hinny Pawsey, in addition to Emily’s Rubus-mates Christi Andropolis (viola) and David Newey (guitar). Both in terms of music and words, Emily’s songs and their settings are both harshly sensuous and intensely tactile in character, while she has an imaginative yet wholly instinctive approach to matters of phrasing, texture and structure whereby any apparent melodic non-sequiturs, structural irregularities or perceived inconsistencies are quickly seen to be keen responses to the storytelling (for there are no easy answers or tidy resolutions here). You need to keep your wits about you, and on occasion you may also find yourself significantly distracted by the sheer poetry of Emily’s textual adventures... but each individual song is in actuality exquisitely formed and carefully, lovingly textured.

Many of the songs embrace the theme of metamorphosis: Bones And Feathers is a fable of skeletons turned into birds, set to an urgent, nervy guitar rhythm that’s taken up and embellished by a dark splintery viola pizzicato which then picks up the bow and swoops up to the skies in layered vocalisation, whereas Tongue-Tied, a woman’s incantation to free her bewitched bird-formed brothers, naturally transforms itself into a mesmerising vocal round. The sinister fairytale of Stick Stock, a busy and disturbingly insistent nursery-rhyme playground chant sung by a girl who’s been transformed into a dove and baked into pies (don’t ask!), is followed by Little Longing, a gloomy anti-lullaby for an unborn child made of sawdust and sackcloth that Emily remembered from a particularly vivid dream. In a kind of street-life companion-piece to Bones And Feathers, Sirens are heard to wail disturbingly in clashing harmonies from parallel universes, as they are transformed when "broken glass turns to glittering diamonds", while the acappella Three Gold Hairs is an ostensibly simple tale of rebirth given a disquietingly cryptic, tonally shapeshifting musical progression. Then, of course, transformation (here, recycling of body parts! figures large in the ballad of Two Sisters (of which Emily turns in a stark yet supremely flexible version with Rachel’s rippling bardic harp for accompaniment). And earlier, two consecutive songs (Fine Silica and Grey Stone) are connected to the Selkie legend, inhabiting and evoking the creatures’ airy yet claustrophobic underwater environment. Magic forms an integral part of every song here, but perhaps the weirdest alchemy of all is of a musical nature, where, on Pretty Skin, Emily gives voice to a witch’s dream in a kind of distorted Portishead-electronica arrangement by Finn McNicholas.

This is a truly extraordinary disc, which at the moment (and after innumerable plays too) still has the most seriously neck-prickling quotient of any I’ve heard since The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. It’s not comfortable listening, being uncompromisingly demanding and searching, challenging and stimulating. But it’s also totally engrossing and beguiling, and try as I might, I really can’t dislodge its dark delights from my mind - nor do I ever envisage my wishing to.

Not having heard of them since the release of sophomore album Takista five years back, I'd feared the Shropshire acoustic folk rock quartet had disappeared into the void. Good news then to find their third album dropping through the letterbox and, again produced by Ron Rogers, still seeding the lyrics with potent political themes and fruitfully mining the seam of jazz influenced prog-folk that fuelled classic albums by Traffic, Led Zep, and, more recently Paul Weller.

As the swirling dark rhythms of Come The Night and the didg drones of the bluesy Hey Man! respectively bear witness, there's also strong Eastern and Aboriginal colours in evidence. At times equally evocative of Asian textured 60s prog rock outfit Quintessence, the jam psychedelic folk of the Dead and, on the surging mantra rock Only Worlds Away, Midnight Oil, this is by far their most musically muscular album, core instrumentation augmented with the cello, melodeon, cornet, sax and Spanish guitar and the rhythms firmly focused on conjuring both groove and atmosphere.

Take a listen to What Ya Gonna Do For Love where, deep voiced vocalist Mark Haywood sounding like Johnny Cash, they weave all manner of musical textures and instrumental intrusions over the steady swampy march beat, dropping in a reference to The Beatles along the way. It's hard not to be impressed.

They get mellow for the bluesy Come On Over and, marrying Spanish and raga, Love Has Only Just Begun while roots country flavours lurk among the reflective gravel and accordion of Lonely and Train To Heaven runs fat sax and Celtic reel strains through a rowdy bluegrass stomp.

However, it's the urgent, heady, uptempo numbers that provide the album's driving wheel and keep bring you back time and time again to feel the rush of blood they stir. In a wry acknowledgement of the way music is often obscured and judged by image, the sleeve features them all headless with no clue to their look or age. Doubtless, many will still dismissively tag it as dad rock for New Age festivals and there is, perhaps, an element of truth to that. But, as they effortlessly demonstrate, father clearly knows best.

After three albums of self-penned romantic melancholia, the dust gruff Texas troubadour has taken time out to pay acoustic tribute to artists who have lined his path, shaped his musical vision or generally just made him smile.

Divided into two volumes, the first is a fascinatingly eclectic selection that opens with Slow And Steady Wins The Race, the aching spiritual written by David Bazan for his Pedro The Lion project, and proceeds to a simple, tremulously world weary solo acoustic version of My Way. Along the way there's familiar outings with a strummed The Times They Are A Changin' that harks more to Woody than Bob, a plaintively gorgeous reading of John Denver's This Old Guitar and a bruised and battered crawl through Cohen's Suzanne.

These in turn keep intriguingly mixed company with an organ backed slow shuffle through Emmy The Great's We Almost Had A Baby, Centro Matic's Texan desert mooded Not Forever Now accompanied by windswept piano and a haunting cracked, banjo flecked version of 19th century spiritual Kiss Me Mother, Kiss Your Darling as sung by the original Christy's Minstrels and perhaps better known from the Cox Family recording as I Am Weary Let Me Rest.

Opening Vol 2 with Santo and Johnny's surf ballad instrumental Sleepwalk, things get beefed up with a faithfully big building take on Orbison's Running Scared and a ferocious fuzz guitar and barrelhouse piano strut through Patsy Cline's Stop The World that you almost hear the White Stripes cursing themselves for not thinking of it first. Then there's Buddy Holly's Listen To Me, its teen hop innocence reconstructed in a cloud of fuzz like Johnny Cash fronting The Jesus and Mary Chain and, keeping the feedback at max, a brutal sonic storm transfiguration of Leadbelly's In The Pines.

It doesn't all come off. Are You Lonesome is a tedious plod, fuzzing up The Lovin' Spoonful's You Didn't Have To Be So Nice just doesn't work, Hinson's attempt to retain Sebastian's laid back insouciance merely adding to the backfiring mess, and a muddy, scuzzed, xylophone tinkled While My Guitar Gently Weeps scored for some border country ghost town saloon is the stuff for which skip buttons were invented. For the most though, these strangers turn out to be friends you didn't know.

The first two releases in the label's planned welcome reissue of her Columbia catalogue come (as will the others) with bonus tracks and detailed, often candid, booklet notes by Ian alongside unseen photos from her own collection. Between The Lines was the 1975 album that reintroduced many - myself included - to the singer they'd first discovered with Society's Child but who had, over the passing years, almost vanished into obscurity. It remains, arguably, her best album, it certainly features her best known songs; the tender, heartcracked, lovelorn and ugly duckling ballads At Seventeen, In The Winter, Lover's Lullaby, When The Party's Over, Bright Lights & Promises and Between The Lines, a 2002 live version of which provides the bonus track.

The album also includes Tea & Sympathy, the song that welcomes her back into my life when I saw her on the Old Grey Whistle Test.

Excellent news than that, the second disc in the set is a full OGWT concert from 1976 that features many of the tracks from the album alongside I Would Like To Dance and Jesse. It's a wonderful, intimate performance, complemented by two further Whistle Test recordings of Dance With Me and Stars from 1974, a rather cheesily shot The Other Side Of The Sun from a 1980 Lena Zavaroni And Music and, from a 1976 Shirley Bassey show, a wistful version of At Seventeen. The notes recall how, immediately prior to that, Bassey had performed a version of Jesse featuring Ian on piano.

Though it would have made more sense to pair the albums chronologically, the second in the series features her 1974 comeback album and the 1976 follow up to Between The Lines. Often of a jazzy persuasion, the songs on the former, which she describes as her 'first grown up record' in her notes about how it came into being and got her a deal with Columbia, are probably not as well known. The title track's bittersweet reflection on fame remains a firm favourite in the canon, but it is the heartbreaking Jesse that lights up the album, taking pride of place in a list of her finest songs. Recorded in Glasgow in 1976, the stripped back, nakedly live version bonus track merely confirms what a masterpiece it is.

Following the Platinum selling, multiple Grammy nominated Between The Lines, follow up Aftertones was something of a disappointment. In the notes, Ian herself says it's seriously flawed, explaining that producer Brooks Arthur had sold the studio where the previous two had been made, that, alongside their mixer and several musicians, session leader Ron Frangipane was no longer onboard, and that performing commitments left little time for writing or recording.

Featuring I Would Like To Dance, Boy, I Really Tied One On, Love Is Blind (also the live bonus track) and, recorded with Phoebe Snow and Odetta, Hymn, it sold respectably enough and, surprisingly, made her a superstar in Asia, but it's not an album that you find yourself reaching for when you want to introduce new ears to her music.

In 1997 she would be back on form with Miracle Row while 1979's Fly Too High would contain her first and only UK Top 50 singles Fly Too High and The Other Side Of The Sun (inexplicably none of her albums have ever made the Top 40 here), but that's a story for another reissue.

You struggle for comparisons to give an idea of what to expect from the slightly lisping, breathlessly voiced Southampton singer-songwriter. Perhaps the closest you can get is an intermingling of early Melanie, Victoria Williams, Leo Kottke, and Martha Wainwright with a large side order of whimsy and quirk.

This is her second album and, while I've never heard Worm Food, it's immediately apparent that she falls into the love or hate category with her cryptic, often childlike lyrics, skittering rhythms and that very individual little girl conversational delivery.

She sings - and partly speaks - False Alarm rather like a six year old confessing their latest mischief while woodwinds scamper around the jumping bean of a tune before launching into the six minute, album title containing jazzy ADHD cabaret Eris as, again switching between spoken and sung - she relates a frustrated astronomical courtship between Pluto and dwarf star Eris; as in the planet and the dwarf star. It's either a brilliant latter day Edward Lear or irritatingly barking, depending on your sensibilities.

And so it goes through an oddball assortment of songs about love, death, the circling of relationships, self-confidence, growing old, being young, scale and perspective, and, on the carnival, classical and cabaret tempo shifting Race Cars, the case for more haste less speed.

There's something endearingly winsome yet deeply sad about The Evolution Of Mr. Charisma who "kissed all the girls until he made himself cry" while Friendly is a near eight minute prevarication about romance and, just so you know she's not just mucking about, Sisyphean Rock 'n' Roll finds her showcasing her instrumental virtuosity (and those Kottke influences) with a six minute acoustic guitar piece that's finds her as adept at wordless storytelling as she is with her eccentric verses.

I well remember when JATS burst on the scene 27 years ago with their rebel rousing, tear it up cover of Absolutely Sweet Marie, swiftly consolidating with accompanying album Fervor and follow up Lost & Found and such alt country rocking and Southern honky tonk diamonds as Hot Nights In Georgia, Harvest Moon, Broken Whiskey Glass, Blanket of Sorrow and Shop It Around.

Despite songs like Golden Ball And Chain and Bible And A Gun, they never again managed to produce albums of such sustained brilliance and excitement and, while they never officially disbanded, there’s been little evidence of them since the 1998 live set Midnight Roads & Stages. Indeed, rhythm section Perry Baggs and Jeff Johnson are no longer part of the intermittent line-up.

However, 14 years on from Clear Impetuous Morning, guitarist Warren E. Hodges has persuaded frontman Jason Ringenberg back into the studio alongside new players Al Collins and Pontus Snibb for an album that, if it doesn’t actually contain any stone classics, does go quite a way to recapturing old glories.

They can still rip it up with a frantic rock n rolling pace, ably demonstrated on the opening Moonshine Guy and its Releasing Celtic Prisoners rowdy jig midsection, the vintage Southern country cowpunk Mona Lee with its 19th Nervous Breakdown riffs, bluesy swagger Deep Holy Water and the breakneck Getting Nowhere Fast. Elsewhere, Land Of The Free keeps the muscle pumped but takes the tempo down to a Neil Young electric bluesy burn and Days Of Wine And Roses jangles with soaring memories of The Byrds.

The album also serves reminder that the band can turn on the keening high lonesome ballad with the best of them. Listen to the plaintive ache of Beat On The Mountain miner’s lament and Mother Of Greed which traces the Ringenberg family history from the coal seams and factory closures of 1910 North Wales to contemporary Alabama.

More than anything, though, crackling with their live energy and the volume cranked up loud, it makes you want to pull on your jeans, grab a beer and raise hell. And such legacies are worth cherishing.

Despite having released a combined total of 16 albums during the past 20 years, you’ve likely not heard of either Josh Joplin or Garrison Starr in their solo careers, but, recorded over six days, this debut joint endeavour will certainly make their names ring loudly in folk revival circles and beyond.

With Joplin handling piano and autoharp, the pair of them sharing duties on vocals, guitar, harmonica and xylophone, and guest musos providing drums, dobor, pedal steel, banjo, bass and dulcimer, it’s a collection of ten reworked traditional songs and two originals, topped off with a seemingly unlikely but perfectly dovetailed cover version.

They take the trad path first with Hiram Hubbard setting the ball rolling with rumbling pulsing percussion backing and stabs of guitar as the pair harmonise in classic folk singer fashion on the American south tale of the arrest and execution of the innocent title character. Given an indie rock arrangement, the much covered Peggy-O gets a new lease of life with a rolling Velvets-like beat and a delivery that suggests an Appalchian answer to White Stripes.

Originally a gospel field song, Angel Gabriel is recast with echoes of early REM in its strummed guitar and banjo colourings, then comes the sea shantyish Shady Grove, a song that is itself based on Mattie Groves and, even more of a folk staple, a paddled drum beat and simple guitar gentle sway through The Water Is Wide with Starr taking solo vocal.

Joplin takes over lead for The Housewife's Lament, an old Gaelic tune that here rolls along with a marching melody heavily reminiscent of John Prine’s Paradise, before delivering an acapella Pretty Saro.

A dark tinged 18th Century lullaby, All The Pretty Little Horses strums along nicely before a twangy electric guitar solo arrives to evoke the song’s reputed origins as a slave’s lament for her dead child. The penultimate trad tune is a mere 51 seconds of Come All You Young & Tender Ladies with Starr, backed by a reverb bassline, delivering a warning about losing your virtue too.

The tenth and final number from the archives tips the hat to John Lomax with the pair duetting on unrequited love lament Look Down That Lonesome Road. It’s sandwiched between the two self-penned tunes. Joplin provides the first with Joseph Hillstrom 1879-1915, another history of Swedish born labour activist Joe Hill delivered in a classic Kingston Trio/Guthrie manner, while, inspired by grief and loss, the co-written High, Low & Wide is an acoustic mid-tempo melancholic reflection on mortality.

Then, tagged on as a bonus treat, comes Bigmouth Strikes Again which, and I say this as a compliment, sounds like early REM covering The Smiths, a version both faithful in style and spirit but also casting a light on the folk influences that form part of Morrissey’s musical fabric.

Although the pair continue with their own careers and Starr’s recently formed a band with former Toad The Wet Sprocket singer Glen Philips, she says they’re "definitely looking at this as something that has a future to it," says Starr. You and me both.

Having relocated to Spain five years ago, it's not as much of a surprise as some reviewers have expressed to find Nebraska native Rouse exploring the music of his new home. Nor is the Latin groove something new to his work. Think back to 1972 and you'll remember hearing it in evidence even then on James while bossa nova rhythms were all over Subtitlo just a few years back. However, this time he's gone the whole Latin jazz hog.

Opening the Mediterranean breezes of the instrumental Bienvenido, the first song you hear is the bossa nova Duerme, a cover of a 50s number by Cuban pianist-singer Bola De Nieve that Rouse sings in Spanish. Indeed, he does so on several numbers here, among them Mesie Julian, a reworked second Nieve cover and the songs that set the album in motion, the acoustic guitar led rumba of the self-penned Valencia and the calypso flavoured Las Voces, the lyric translations provided by wife Paz Suay.

He does, of course, sing in English too, but those tracks are still informed by balmy Latin musical textures. He even manages to take Civil War era trad folk tune Cotton Eye Joe and transform it into a dreamily lush sway with brushed drums by Brazilian percussionist Sam Bacco.

Built on a jazz piano figure and woodwind, the lazy shuffling Lemon Tree recalls the Paul Simon comparisons from previous albums, even more so on I Will Live On Islands which takes its musical cue from Afro-Cuban carnival dance grooves and wouldn't have been out of place on Simon's own Rhythm Of The Saints.

Ending the album with the closing chord cycle repeating early hours mood of Don't Act Tough with its fat tenor sax solo courtesy of Jim Hoke, it's certainly an Old World away from the days of Dressed Up Like Nebraska. The title is misleading, Rouse is no musical tourist, he's put down roots and, if this is any indication of what lies ahead, then it would be a stubborn fan indeed who'd urge repatriation.

The daughter of 60s American folk royalty, Maria and Geoff, her godfather is also legendary manager-producer Joe Boyd, so you might reasonably expect Muldaur to follow in the family footsteps. Forget that.

Starting out singing backing on her father's albums, she was invited to join Todd Rundgren's band for a world tour, subsequently figuring on both his Nearly Human and 2nd Wind releases. Following an abortive attempt to launch a solo career with a self-titled 1992 album of ill-advised pop/rock, she's spent the last 18 years providing back up and harmonies, on disc and on stage, for such diverse names as Clapton, Rufus Wainwright, Teddy Thompson, Dave Gahan and Marianne Faithful.

Finally, however, she's stepping into the spotlight again; and this time, with that wealth of experience to draw on, she knows exactly what she's doing and what she wants.

Blessed with a voice that could trigger an earthquake (at one acoustic festival she had to sing facing the rear of the stage so her unamplified voice didn't drown everything out), she delivers an album of gospel soul and blues that calls to mind the likes of Brenda Lee and Aretha and makes Duffy and Amy sound like they're whispering.

Her songwriting confidence still, perhaps, shaken from that self-penned debut album, she only contributes one number here, Nancy Sinatra-ish album closer Comatose Town. A sleepy time last dance torch song, it suggests she should pick up the pen more often.

Recorded in one room with the musicians playing together live, the other 11 tracks comprise a collection of relatively obscure soul and jump blues tunes that stretch as far back as the largely voice and clattering percussion recording of Hopali, a clapping play song gathered by Alan Lomax in 1934.

She sets the flame high with the opening I’ve Got A Feeling, a storming version of a 1954 belter by Big Maybelle, proceeding through the such highlights as Eugene Record penned Barbara Acklin soul classic Just Ain’t No Love, the brass pumping take on Lee Dorsey’s You’re Breaking Me Up that conjures images of American Bandstand, a slow dance smooch through James Brown’s Lost Someone and a faithful itchy rhythm reading of the 1957 Bo Diddley title track on which she duets with Joseph Arthur.

She certainly seems to have a well stocked record collection, with other tracks embracing Al Gorgoni and Chip Taylor’s soul stomping, organ driven You’ve Got Me Uptight (covered by, among others, Evie Sands and Arthur Freeman), NRBQ’s country-soul groove Blame It On The World, Just Kiss Me Once, a lesser known number from prolific 50s r&b songwriter George Motola and a fingerclicking There’s Another Place That I Can’t Go, the Lee Pockriss song recorded for Sun by Charlie Rich and its tune subsequently borrowed for Sonny & Cher’s The Beat Goes On.

Featuring guest contributions from Teddy Thompson, Lenny Pickett and Barry Reynolds, and dedicated to Steve Costello, who provided the scorching authentic 50s style r&b guitar and died tragically young in 2008, the day before his 29th birthday, it’s a brassy, sassy, and swinging set of vintage r&b that sounds as fresh as if it had just been delivered hot of the presses at Memphis Shoals.

That’s W as in Wes, a Coventry singer-songwriter and member of occasional Midlands combo The Dirty Band with whom he’s already made one album with a new EP on the way. Taking its title from an area of his hometown, this finds him teamed with co-producer/guitarist Paul Hartry of Coventry country blues outfit The Shackletons with assorted friends contributing anything from banjo and flute to upright bass and mandolin.

Once past the tired device of surfing radio frequencies (including a snatch of Dancing Queen, but don’t tell MCPS), what you get is some highly appealing laid back bucolic busker folk that can’t help but have you reaching for the Bright Eyes comparisons.

Fortunately, Finch more than measures up with his dusty twang, fingerpicked guitar and songs that score high in terms of both lyric and melody. Opening number Wooden Hill is a lovely, lazy tune designed to be listened to while lying on the banks of a river on a balmy summer afternoon, the "I’ve got the gist of it" refrain buzzing around your head like dragonflies.

The tempo picks up on the banjo scuffling Oh My Days! where there’s also perhaps a touch of the early Andy White and Nuneaton neighbours Nizlopi in the jogalong mix with breezy lyrics that rhyme ‘miss you’ with ‘thorny issue’. Air, Land And Sea stretches the arms again, Finch’s sleepy-eyed tones rolling over thoughts of Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance before continuing into the celebrate the little things themed rustic folk-blues Ain’t We The Lucky Ones with its giggling steal from the chorus of Huey Lewis’s The Power of Love.

They’re playful again on Jack To Do which starts off as another gentle pastoral jog until following the line ‘ cut a long story short’ the song does just that, briefly, before relaunching on a stop start train rhythm of brushed percussion, bubbling banjo, and glockenspiel.

Instrumental is just that, a folk blues guitar work out that nods to the influences of Jansch and Graham, vocals resuming on the Oberst-like Keep Fishing.

An insomnia and stagnated relationship lament that slow dances with music hall wheezing piano-accordion, The New Waltz fulfils the Dixie promise of its ‘look away’ line by erupting, American Trilogy style, into a full blown pastiche chorus of The Battle Hymn Of The Republic, before bringing things full circle with a world weary reprise of Wooden Hill as mandolins and accordions gather round the campfire.

If this had been written and recorded in an isolated cabin in the woods while the musicians foraged for food and grew long, straggly beards while winter held them guests rather than a studio in Coventry, Finch would be knee deep in critical acclaim. Tell you what, just pretend it was, okay.

Led by singer-guitarist Rob Waller, the Texas country California four piece have been knocking around since 1999, releasing four albums without ever really troubling national awareness. This then is a best of collection of non hits (including three new recordings, three previously unissued and one live track) that, as the title suggests, they reckon should have been. It has to be said, though, that there’s a gulf between that fantasy and the commercial reality that the songs are generally not equipped to cross.

They play well and write catchy melodies, there’s a streak of humour (Texakanada, the previously unrecorded Sexy Vacation), social and political commentary (Wonder Valley Fight Song, Byrd From West Virginia, Raised By Hippies. Humboldt), eco idealism (I See Hawks In L.A., featured here as the spare original demo), lashings of pedal steel, good ol’ boy rock n rolling, bluegrass, and honky tonk balladeering. However, while it’s the sort of highway driving album that passes the miles and has you tapping the wheel but rarely makes you want to pull over and just listen. There’s two stand-out exceptions, tellingly both duets with Carla Olson with Waller at his growly best. Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulet is a rolling Texicana number featuring Cajun fiddle while Bossier City is a cover of a minor David Allen Coe hit that conjures the vintage moments of Gram and Emmylou (most notably their cover of Streets Of Baltimore). A few more like this over the past decade, and a real greatest hits album wouldn’t have been just wishful thinking.

It’s three years since Minnikin released Folk Art, a simple bucolic affair as homespun as the hessian pouch in which it was packaged. Anyone expecting more of the same, should take a breath now.

Again working with her bandwagon of brother Gabe, Brian Murray, Dave Christensen and Anna Plaskett, here joined by guitarist Craig Buckley, its musical palette is still formed from roots, country, 40s music hall, jazz and bluegrass but here she’s painting the same pictures on two very different canvases.

Taking two years to make and necessitating the addition of a male vocal choir and a wide selection of additional instruments that include woodwinds, organ, brass, dulcimer and pedal steel, it treats on the different perspectives people have on death (basically melancholic and less so) over the course of six songs. However, it then does a literal double take and revisits the same six songs in entirely different synth-laced arrangements. So, for example, The Theme Song I lollopingly sways along with parping brass whereas The Theme Song II comes with a slower tempo, fluttering flutes and the lyrics removed to leave just the ahh ahhing backing vocals.

Likewise, the first Animals Of Breman dapples its fingers lazily in the banjo sunshine while what sounds like woodchucks trill in the background and warm brass rays and steel glimmer behind her. The second is a far more orchestral affair of synthesised strings, computer effects, bass lines and discordance, the lyrics again reduced to repeated phrases.

Whether you prefer the original coy Sleeping And Dreaming with its R&B spine and sha la las or the click track, bass throbbing version with its electronic effects, or favour the flute shaped, clacking crackling colours of the reinvented title track over its lullabying predecessor with its jaunty vaudeville sing song vibe is all going to be down to personal musical preferences. I’d have to cast my vote for the lazy, drunken brass and tempo lurching Louisiana sway of Finale I over the swarm of buzzing electronic bees that hover over Finale II, but it’s an accomplishment that, even when the tunes take on radically different creative forms, they always retain the core spirit and sense of life affirmation that makes this such an intriguing, challenging and ultimately mesmerising listen.

Being confronted with a blurb that describes her as "the conscious person's Renaissance Singer/Songwriter. A strong & sensitive Artist tuned into living peacefully in today's uncertain world", immediately prompts me to expect some sort of New Age dippiness.

However, the CD having arrived with payola in the form of a Swiss bar of chocolate-enrobed Ovaltine biscuit, I’m predisposed to give it a chance.

Thankfully, the soft shuffling opening title track quickly dispels such fears, revealing the Boston born, Switzerland based Wimmer to be more in tune with the Americana of Lucinda Williams with a warm, relaxed, slightly twang-smeared huskiness that’s drawn comparisons to Chrissie Hynde.

It’s a winning introduction and she proceeds to cement our new relationship over the course of the following nine cuts, from the equally easy rolling Ten-Four through a ska-country bouncing Lover From Last Summer, a bluegrass streaked Dreams Bring Me Down and the fragile folk balladeering My Name Is Love to closing bar room guitar slinging Nashville rocker Self-Righteous Son Of A Bitch where she shows she has the sass to match the sweet.

Topped off with a dreamy, piano waltzing cover of Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart, it deserves to win her wider attention and build on the positive reviews for her Live Within Live Without 2003 debut. Released in Europe at the end of last year, two tracks found their way on to the end of year Top Ten of Glasgow based Radio Six International. I’d be surprised if at least one didn’t figure on the Radio 2 list in nine months time. Even without chocolate bars.

If nothing else, referencing Arthur Lee and Bob Dylan on the press release is certainly a good way to prompt a listen. However, you then have to make good on the comparisons. A London based four piece, they’ve been together for some five years and this is actually their second album. As 60s influenced folk-rock-blues go, it’s actually pretty good but you’ll search in vain for the spirits of Dylan and Love, even if they do have a song called Old Man.

Still, once you realise this isn’t Forever Changes meets Bringing It All Back Home, then you can concentrate on Shabby Rogue instead. A mix of live recordings and overdubs, it opens with Northern lights, a spoken Scottish voice giving way to a swirling wall of noise military beat tune that takes its Gaelic cue from Peatbog Faeries fiddler Adam Sutherland.

My Future With You switches mood immediately to tinkling mid-tempo before the strident guitars strike back up again with The Mountain. Unfortunately, this tend to rather fall apart from this point with a frustrating inconsistency and meandering sense of direction.

Old Man flirts with jazzy rhythms, previous single My Life As A Secret Agent ditches folk entirely for surf guitar indie rockabilly, hollow drums and distorted vocals, Hidden In The Yard tries piano led bossa nova, Jack In The Box harks back to 60s prog psychedelic folk and Tales From The City is all muddy vocal garage blues rock with aspirations to some hybrid of Led Zep and Iggy Pop.

Wandering interest is revived by the nine minute title track, a simple acoustic strum and dust country, world weary vocal coloured by bottle neck and trumpet building to a big anthemic chorus and brass finale. If they can make a third album with that sort of heart and focus, then things might not be as shabby as they currently appear.

When the Sheffield six piece came to record their debut album, few knew their way round the studio quite as well as they. Hardly surprising really since, finding themselves without any major label backing, they struck a deal with Arctic Monkeys/Richard Hawley producer Alan Smythe to spend two months helping build the place in return for recording time when it was completed. If the finished studio is as good as the finished album, then the music industry’s gain is the construction industry’s loss.

As the title suggests, this lot are in the business of life affirming, optimistic punch the sky anthems built to turn stadiums into sea of waving arms and voices singing in unison. It’s a musical manifesto laid out from the get go with Streets, four minutes of heroic romance streaked Springsteenesque blue collar pop with ringing guitars, circling riffs, cascading keyboard, pounding drums, big chorus and soaring harmony vocals.

They don't let up as, almost designed as a live set segue, Roy Bittan piano leads into I Couldn’t Love You More, brothers Sam and Matthew Taylor sharing vocals with Alice Faraday. All it needed was a sax break and it could have sailed straight out of Tunnel Of Love. Making it three in a row, 1000 Miles is another folk pop standard bearer, this time echoing Rumours era Fleetwood Mac with a dose of pre-Eurovision Katrina & The Waves.

With a further nine tracks to go, the standard never falters as they mine such other influences as Phil Spector, Neil Diamond and, I’d venture, Gene Pitney across both big young and in love, hood down and cruising numbers like You’re Not Alone, Sarah, Cherry Street (just off the boardwalk from Bruce’s Backstreets) and the Jim Steinman-esque When We Were 17 alongside the more reflective acoustic 60s pop ballad melancholia of Driving To Nowhere (which actually reminds me of Smokie at their very best), Cross The Water and the harmonica introed What A Bloody Shame.

Yes it’s derivative and yes it will, inevitably, suffer the slings and arrows of comparisons to The Gaslight Anthem and, sure, the songs don’t have their inspired desperate urgency and scarred heart poeticism and nor do they burn with the same life or death passion of a Born To Run or a Badlands.

But, if I was 17, had just discovered Rebel Without A Cause and was spending my nights in romantic fantasies of desert highways and girls with wild hair and wilder eyes, then this is the band whose name I’d have tattooed on my arm. Hell, maybe I’ll just do it anyway.

Over the past couple of years, the Bristol based singer-songwriter has been steadily making a name for herself with festival appearances at home and in Europe (she recently headlining the Bordeaux River Festival), supporting Newton Faulkner, Lou Rhodes and Martin Simpson, contributing to an Odetta tribute album and recording for Children in Need single all You Need Is Love.

Having released an EP four years, her debut album has been a long time coming. It’s certainly worth the wait. Described in Bristol’s splendid listings magazine Venue as a singer of ‘sad-eyed modern spirituals’, she has a dark, oak-matured pure voice that at times calls to mind Joan Baez, most especially so on the opening strings and guitar laced You Will Be Free. On the other hand, the hushed, intimate Soft Sleeper conjures Liz Frazer from This Mortal Coil fronting The Cowboy Junkies for their Trinity Sessions album. Then again, the lilting township hued True Speaker suggests a meld of Tanita Tikaram and Thea Gilmore singing Paul Simon while her range and depth of expression on the soul-folk No-One But My Best carries echoes of early Armatrading.

None of these references should be taken to suggest Brooks is simply blotting paper for her influences. The echoes may be familiar but her voice is distinctively her own while, as she ably demonstrates with the desert bluesy Hunger, a stripped naked gospel infused Lines, and the bass, strings and piano accompanied yearningly heartfelt rootsiness of I Don’t Want No Other, so too are her warm, enfolding melodies and confessional lyrics.

Having engraved her name in your heart with the slow building, softly pulsing eight minutes Is It Love, the showstopper that could feasibly bring America quivering to its knees, she ends the album with a simple, hymnal voice and guitar version of the traditional spiritual Michael Row The Boat. All you can say is, hallelujah.

Broadcasting out of Lexington with a mixture of talk and music, hosted by Brad Becker and presented by Tom Brown, Red Barn Radio offers a showcase for musicians who celebrate and keep alive the music of Kentucky. Based in Charleston, West Virginia, Illinois born Lilly is one such name, performing both his own material and songs by such names as Jimmie Rodgers and the Louvins. As Becker says in his introduction, "he writes new songs that sound as old as the hills, and performs older songs like they were made yesterday."

Armed with just acoustic guitar and a dusty voice that recalls Hank Williams and Rodgers alike, most of the material from this May 6, 2009 broadcast is self-penned but, unless you knew otherwise, you’d be hard put to say which out of Good News/Bad News, Broken Moon and Johnny Don’t Drunk was original and which was from the archive.

Featuring Lilly’s historically informed, chatty introductions and asides, it’s rather like turning on the radio and finding you’ve somehow tuned in back down time to some 30s hillbilly station.

The set features a cover of Rodger’s No Hard Times, Lilly proving a fine yodeller on both that and his own A Little Yodel Goes A Long Way, Roadkill is a broken heart song with some wittily amusing imagery, Tore Up From The Floor Up showcases his fingerpicking blues guitar work, and Spirit (Bend Close To Me) recalls the family Bible songs of the Carter Family. A particular delight is his cover of Rod Stewart oldie Gasoline Alley, which restores it to the Depression era period that is its spiritual home.

Devotees of old school roots country should certainly seek this out and discover what other gems might be lurking under the Red Barn roof.

Obsessive Handsome Family completists might care to know that klezmer lurching opening song For The Empress features Brett Sparks on saw. In addition, brother Darrell provides the album’s bass and harmonica. I mention this because it’s the sort of record likely to appeal to Family followers with its sparse backwoods folk and blues vibe, organic instrumentation (including a 30s pump organ) and a plethora of songs about murder and death.

Although other musicians help out, Trilobite is actually a vehicle for New Mexico singer-songwriter Mark Ray Lewis, a Stanford graduate and award winning short story writer and author of autobiographical novel Long Sad River. He’s named his band after the three lobed marine arthropods, the fossils of which date back some 540 million years. The sound fits perfectly.

As you’d expect the songs are literate and narratively enigmatic, titles coming with annotations so that the subject matter of Tin Trombone is summed up as ‘disrespect of a musical instrument leads to fratricide’ while Mark Twain notes that ‘young people skip stones, male love, lose". With its references to jealous brothers, axes, spades, and graves, murder ballad Putnam Silt Loam gives Nick Cave a run for his money while other highlights would have to include the strummed shuffling Spite The Sky with its mark of Cain reference, the creepy Against Moontide where a baby gets set adrift down the river in a small basket, and the spooked Del’s Prayer where, backed by that creaking pump organ, a world weary and desperate man calls on God to ‘take me now’.

Apparently, Ross Godfrey from Morcheeba is a big fan after hearing a track on the Bob Harris show. Give this a listen and you might become one too.

Listening to the soulful folk hue of Go Out with its percussive guitar rhythms and to the banjo and accordion accompanied fairground attraction handclapping bounce of Mooneyes, it’s hard not to think of Macbeth (more properly MacBeath) as Edinburgh’s answer to Glasgow’s Eddi Reader. Both have that slight warm burr to the voice, both write music that embraces jazz, folk and pop colours and both can summon either giddy joy or poignant sadness.

Kiss off opener Ya Hoe skips along with vocal whoops that make you want to run down the street clicking your heels in the air, Let It Go turns on the Brubeck juice for a brushed drums and piano jazz shuffle and with its lines about forty a day woodbine girls, transvestites in latex and pearls and randy truckers, Conjugal Scene is straight out of burlesque cabaret by way of Tom Waits.

The dominant mood of the album, however, is reflection, beautifully manifested in such emotion tugging numbers as the simple voice and guitar Alison’s Song, the growing up late acquired wisdom of Waltzing In Blue and, best of all, piano ballad Eight Ball’s tale of a thirtysomething housewife and mother’s lost dreams. She even manages to include a track called Babies which, for all its cooing 50s doo wop backing, tinkling piano scale and rock to sleep rhythm, manages to avoid any hint of twee.

Save for the odd gig in Sri Lanka, Spain, Latvia and Estonia, she’s not really played much outside of Scotland so mainstream awareness across the country is, at present, rather limited. Given the reviews and radio play the album deserves, that situation should soon begin to change and see gathering demand for increasingly frequent ventures south of the border.

Making their debut with a live album, the side project collaboration between Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack now follows up with a studio set that ably taps into their stage energy and underlines their Southern rock roadhouse band heritage.

With John Deaderick on keyboards and Dave Jacques and Paul Griffith providing the rhythm section, they confidently walk a path trod by the likes of the Allmans, Marshall Tucker Band and the Stones before them. Indeed, Nobody From Nowhere features a percussion motif not a million miles away from Sympathy For The Devil while a similar Stonesy bar room swagger carries along Womack’s Early To Bed, Early to Rise. A marriage of Iko Iko and Bo Diddley riff drives the lyrically playful goodtime shrugging boogie Wash & Fold while organ led instrumental Love In A Bottle hits a swampy Creedence groove.

Mouth harp, saloon piano and slide guitar provide a suitably dirty blues bedrock for I Want To Be Clean which features a guest shot from Todd Snider and in places sounds like a slowed down Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.

Not too surprising then to also hear Dylan’s influence at work on the Highway 51 barrelling I Went To Heaven In A Dream Last Night, rambling acoustic folk blues Redemption Is The Mother’s Only Son and, even approximating Bob’s nasal drawl, their soulful r&b flavoured cover of Mike Milius' Guthrie-esque 1968 song The Ballad Of Martin Luther King

Probably more likely to fill venues than shift albums perhaps, but this is solid listening from musicians who know and respect their roots.