Tag Archives: indie folk

Indie-folk/Americana: EP review – Mist & Wing ‘Step Into The Light’

Album reviews, americana, Folk music, , , , , ,

Mist & Wing are a Scottish musical duo made up of Alan and Grace Murray and their debut EP, Step Into The Light, was released at the back-end of last year.

Hailing from the Isle of Skye and growing up with a stammer, Alan Murray found music to be a way of connecting with others that, for him, was easier than speaking.

The EP comprises five tracks of Americana-tinged indie-folk, four songs written by Alan plus a self-composed instrumental. Joining Alan Murray (vocals, guitar, fiddle, mandolin) and Grace Murray (vocals, piano, acoustic guitar) are Jack Henderson (guitars, bass, keyboards, percussion) who also produced the album, Donal McCruden (drums) and Calum Munroe (accordion).

Lead single ‘Country Mile’ (with accompanying video filmed on the Isle of Skye) is a classic driving song, all about wanting to escape the city and take off to the coast.

The duo’s name is inspired by Gaelic words for the Isle of Skye and the influence of the island’s landscape and heritage runs deep through the music. It’s not the only influence, however, by any stretch of the imagination. For a start, they are more indie-folk than trad- folk but the duo also look west from Skye right across the Atlantic for other inspiration and the country influences of the United States very much seep into their songs. Add in a gift for some good old-fashioned storytelling, some catchy choruses and some easy-on-the-ear melodies and you have a compelling combination that makes Step Into The Light an extremely likeable debut.  

Released: 18th November 2022

https://mistandwing.com/

News: ‘Fox and Hare’ the debut single from US indie-folk outfit the John Daniels Band

Album reviews, Folk music, Music news, , , , , ,

The John Daniels Band are a three-piece from Buffalo, New York and ‘Fox and Hare’ is their debut single. Playing together a few years now they’ve been honing their sound on the live circuit. They ask us to imagine if Neil Young, Lenny Kravitz and Pink Floyd got together to form a band – a blend of soul, psychedelia and amazing lyrics.

An album is due later this year, their signature style a union of indie, country and folk music. Comprised of John Verbocy, Drew Azzinaro, and Kevin Urso, who is also the band’s producer, they fuse acoustic and electric guitars with well timed percussion, creating dreamy soundscapes.

The band is the brainchild of frontman and lead songwriter Verbocy, whose raspy, warm vocals and emotional narratives are at the heart of the band. Being a two time cancer survivor, John has plenty of stories to tell and lots of emotion to share.

Asked to describe “Fox and Hare” John Verbocy tells Darren’s Music Blog: “We can recover from anything. It all starts with a thought and manifests into a reality.”

John Verbocy grew up listening to a broad range of musical influences. One day it would be Van Morrison and David Bowie, the next Paul Simon and Curtis Mayfield. “I am a total B-Side guy,” says John, “deep cuts of classic artists through and through.”

Drew Azzinaro met John in high school and they shared an affinity for music and weed, but they didn’t start making tunes together until they reunited again a few years ago. While looking for a band mate, they happened across Kevin Urso and the connection was immediate.

Kevin Urso is multi-talented artist that can claim singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and composer on his resume. He was the guitarist of BeArthur surrounding their album release Welcome To The Ongoing in 2006, and has since collaborated with it’s members on other projects, including Prime Mover by Rocco Of The Snow. In 2015, Kevin performed during Buffalo’s ‘Music Is Art’ festival in a piece called Life On Fire where his piano was set ablaze until it was rendered unplayable by the flames. He released his debut solo album, Goodbye, in 2018.

‘Fox and Hare’ by the John Daniels Band released 30th April 2020

https://johndanielsband.com/

John Daniels band pic

Singer-songwriter: album review – Gary Fulton ‘Blood and Dust’

Album reviews, Folk music, , , , ,

Blood and Dust is the fifth album from Cheshire-based singer songwriter, Gary Fulton. Branded in the acoustic folk category, comparisons have been made with Nick Harper and Rory McLeod and his music has been championed by the likes of Fatea. To be honest, however, there’s so much zestful energy in his songs I heard everything in there, from George Thorogood to 80s/90s indie a la The Las to 60s flower-power era Status Quo. Fulton’s talent is undoubtedly an ability to combine engaging lyrics with unforgettably catchy melodies.

For one who creates music so appealing and with a comparatively weighty back catalogue Fulton has a fairly low-key presence online and there’s not a huge amount of information about the artist to be found either on his reverb-nation site or in the press release that accompanied the album. However, Fulton is certainly deserving of wider attention and, hopefully, the excellent Blood and Dust will go some way to achieving that.

Released: 8th September 2019

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Live review: Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou at Kino Teatre, St Leonards 14/6/19

Folk music, Hastings music scene, Live reviews, , , , , , ,

Tonight’s Kino event with Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou is actually a three-parter: not only a full set from St Leonards’ own nationally-acclaimed indie-folk duo playing on home turf as well as support from another talented local singer-songwriter, Hayley Savage, but also a screening of Trevor Moss’s own film ‘Live In Store’ that documents the duo’s nationwide tour of in-store appearances at independent record shops in support of their album Fair Lady London at the end of last year.

We start with the latter. Moss explains that as a record of the tour the film is inspired by the rough and ready footage of childhood celebrations on his parents’ Super 8 film camera. Shot in black and white the effect is like moody atmospheric arthouse cinema meets shaky pre-VHS, pre-digital family film-show. As a film genre Moss pulls it off brilliantly. And as their couple’s young toddler son also accompanies them on many of their travels the style seems somehow wholly appropriate. Motorways, record stores, Travel Lodges, local radio studios and repeat and repeat – the film captures the humdrum rhythm and repetitiveness of days spent touring but interspersed with the magic that is live performance as they play their songs to appreciative punters between the record and CD racks. As Moss states in the closing credits lets hope such places continue to remain a feature of everyday life rather than a strange curiosity from the past.

Hayley Savage’s brand of folky Americana works for me, for sure. A heartfelt singer songwriter, a lovely warm sound from her semi acoustic guitar that lends itself perfectly to the material and superb backing from her band (Ruby Colley, Lizzie Raffiti and Victoria Howarth) I’d certainly be keen to catch these again.

After seeing Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou ply their wares and play their songs in one record store after another in the earlier film, it’s perhaps a bit of a novelty seeing those songs being performed live on a proper stage in the altogether grander surroundings of the Kino Teatre’s domed auditorium. The duo’s performance loses none of its intimacy though – either with one another or with us the audience. There’s plenty of songs from the recent album Fair Lady London, including beautiful renditions of ‘We Should’ve Gone Dancing’, ‘Everything You Need’ and ‘I Could Break You’ together with a smattering of older material. The voices, the guitars, the lyrics, the vintage keyboards – pretty much every component of Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou act as a duo blends to perfection.

http://www.trevormossandhannahlou.com/

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Previous reviews:

Album review – Fair Lady London

Record Store Day 2017

Folk/indie: album review – Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou ‘Fair Lady London’

Album reviews, Folk music, Hastings music scene, , , , ,

This review was originally published in the Winter 2018 issue of fRoots magazine

An integral part of London’s emerging indie folk scene for a number of years, Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou left the capital for Hastings and are now firmly ensconced in the Sussex seaside town’s thriving local music scene. Three years on from their last album, Fair Lady London is the product of their changed setting and changed priorities.

There is still plenty to showcase the duo’s talent as songwriters here, however. The poignantly bitter-sweet We Should’ve Gone Dancing is immediately and utterly unforgettable while the guitar line on Everything You Need is as beautifully infectious as something that Bert Jansch might have come up with.

For their previous album the duo worked with renowned producer Ethan Johns but now they are back with the trusty 4-track recorder they used on their 2012 album, this time setting up in a castle in the East Sussex countryside. “I’ve never really liked studios,” confesses Moss. “The first one we ever stepped foot in was Olympic as teenagers, the same room as Hendrix, Zeppelin, Stones. I didn’t like it. It felt like a spaceship.”

The lo-fi approach works extremely well and gives the album exactly the kind of understated intimacy the duo’s songs warrant.

Now five albums into their career as a duo Fair Lady London sees Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou continuing to make music that in its own delicate, gentle and thoughtful way continues to demand your attention.

Released: November 2018

http://www.trevormossandhannahlou.com/

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Ryley Walker at St Mary in the Castle, Hastings 5/8/16

Folk music, Hastings music scene, Live reviews, , , , , ,

My review originally appeared in the Hastings Independent 18/8/16

Although originally billed as a collaboration with legendary folk-rock double bass supremo, Danny Thompson, Thompson has had to pull out of this short tour due to illness. However, this did not prevent the young guitarist and singer-songwriter, Ryley Walker, from delivering a spellbinding performance at St Mary in the Castle. As the promotional blurb for the gig put it, someone who “plays guitar like Bert Jansch and sings like Tim Buckley” should not struggle to draw a supportive audience; and so it proved. 27 year-old Walker, from Illinois, is an exceptional acoustic guitarist, very much influenced by 60s/70s artists like the aforementioned Jansch and Buckley as well as the likes of Davey Graham and John Martyn.

The audience (absolutely typical for a folk/acoustic style gig of this type) is composed overwhelmingly of sixty-something baby-boomers and twenty-something millennials. Those of us in our forties and early fifties, like myself, are mainly notable by our absence. We are truly the lost generation as far as music like this goes. This is our collective loss I suppose; but it’s encouraging that the generation below us are picking up the baton, both as audiences and as performers, as the supremely talented Mr Walker exemplifies. A powerful songwriter and a talented musician with a distinctive voice, he’s not afraid to work across genres and thus brings a range of musical influences into his performance, from indie folk, to jazz to blues through to rock and psychedelia.

It is arguable that the acoustics in this cavernous, iconic former church, and perhaps the atmosphere itself, tend to make it work better for folk acts than for rock bands. This gig is far from a gentle, relaxed strum-along though. It’s an incendiary performance with his two band-mates providing throbbing electric bass and wonderfully atmospheric, powerful drumming that throbbed, crashed and reverberated throughout the venue all night. They complement the guitarist perfectly and it makes for a more intense interpretation of his songs in comparison to his two excellent and well-received solo albums, but that’s all part of the excitement of live performance. There is light and shade and definite changes of tempo during the course of the evening, however. The Davey Graham/Bert Jansch guitar influence particularly shines through on the gentler, more laid-back tunes, where Walker is able to simultaneously coax hypnotic rhythms and beautiful intricate melodies out of his instrument.

“Wow. That was very intense, bordering on psychedelic,” concluded the two women sitting next to me when I asked them what they thought at the end of the night. I wouldn’t disagree at all. Two albums into his career, Ryley Walker is showing exceptional promise.

[Note: since this review Ryley’s third album has now been released. More details on his website below]

http://ryleywalker.com/

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