50 CRAVEN FAULTS
Standers
LEAF LABEL
The previously anonymous producer played his first live shows in September, but most attendees weren’t too concerned about his identity – they just wanted to gawp at his stupendous modular synth rig. Standers was his/its finest work to date, a series of hypnotic, throbbing epics that moved slowly but relentlessly like limestone scars through the Yorkshire landscape.
49 MARGO PRICE
Strays
LOMA VISTA
Between writing a memoir and launching a podcast series, the Nashville insurgent also found time to head into Topanga Canyon – armed with fierce quantities of psilocybin and weed – to record her fourth studio album with producer Jonathan Wilson. The results could have been woolly, stoned musings, but instead this devastatingly personal song cycle completed Price’s transformation from retro-country preservationist to anything-goes auteur.
48 ALLISON RUSSELL
The Returner
FANTASY RECORDS
Tracing Russell’s trajectory from early outfits like Birds Of Chicago and Po’ Girl via the Our Native Daughters collaborative project to this, her second solo studio album, the Canadian folk-roots performer emerged as a key artist for 2023 – as well as Joni Mitchell’s favourite clarinet player. Embracing soul, jazz and folk, The Returner explored themes of survival and resilience with grace and power, climaxing with the glo riously uplifting six minute “Requiem”.
47 CIAN NUGENT
She Brings Me Back To The Land Of The Living
NO QUARTER
“I believe in an unwed God/That sleeps all day…” There were bigger reasons for the seven-year gap between Cian Nugent albums than mere indolence, but an ability to channel his vivid Dublin daydreams into song was a key feature of this appealingly warm and unhurried album, topped off by some crunchy Richard Thompson-esque soloing.
ON THIS MONTH’S CD
46 MODERN NATURE
No Fixed Point In Space
BELLA UNION
After recruiting a number of free-jazz musicians for 2021’s Island Of Noise, Jack Cooper sought to apply their techniques to a more gentle, folk rock idiom. Again, key influences became collaborators – it was great to hear Julie Tippetts in Sunset Glow mode – as Cooper edged closer to his Elysian vision of music moving like “a school of fish, notes breaking the surface and then disappearing.”
ON THIS MONTH’S CD
45 FEIST
Multitudes
POLYDOR
Although its creation may have been unconventional – was first workshopped in a series of experimental live shows around Europe, Canada
