Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1False Lankum (2023)False Lankum (2023)Released 24 Mar 2023Lankum, the Dublin quartet, treat Irish traditional ballads as living carriers of dread, tenderness and grief rather than museum pieces. Droning uilleann pipes, shuddering concertina and layered voices make Go Dig My Grave feel like weather rolling in, and the album's slow build of drone and noise…0
  2. 2Time (The Revelator) (2001)Time (The Revelator) (2001)Released 1 Jan 2001Recorded at RCA Studio B in Nashville, Gillian Welch's album distils Appalachian ballads, country blues and old hymns into ten new songs that sound as if they have always existed. David Rawlings's chiming small-bodied guitar dances around her plain, steady voice, and Ruination Day links the Titanic…0
  3. 3Lodestar (2016)Lodestar (2016)Released 1 Jan 2016Shirley Collins, a central figure of the English folk revival, returned with this after almost four decades without recording, made largely at her cottage in Lewes. Her weathered, unadorned voice carries old English and American songs over hurdy-gurdy, fiddle and the sound of birds outside, showing…0
  4. 4Freedom Highway (2017)Freedom Highway (2017)Released 1 Jan 2017Drawing directly on nineteenth-century slave narratives, minstrel banjo techniques and African-American spirituals, Rhiannon Giddens confronts historical trauma with fierce musical clarity. Her commanding vocal range and clawhammer banjo ring out alongside fiddle, brass and beat-driven percussion,…0
  5. 5Hadestown (2010)Hadestown (2010)Released 1 Jan 2010Before expanding onto Broadway stages, Hadestown began as a concept folk opera rooted in rustic American instrumentation. Mitchell transposes the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into a dust-bowl Great Depression setting, using acoustic strings, mournful brass and an ensemble cast…0
  6. 6Here's the Tender Coming (2009)Here's the Tender Coming (2009)Released 1 Jan 2009Rachel and Becky Unthank interpret Northumbrian traditional songs with close-knit sibling harmonies that hold deep regional dignity. Setting nineteenth-century seafaring laments and dialect press-gang ballads against subtle brass band horns, string quartets and Adrian McNally's understated piano,…0
  7. 7The Gloaming (2013)The Gloaming (2013)Released 1 Jan 2013This transatlantic supergroup revitalised Irish traditional music by balancing Martin Hayes's lyrical, expressive fiddle playing against Thomas Bartlett's minimalist, contemporary piano chords. Fronted by Iarla Ó Lionáird's haunting sean-nós vocals, the quintet stretches centuries-old reels into…0
  8. 8All of This Is Chance (2023)All of This Is Chance (2023)Released 1 Jan 2023Rooted in rural County Cavan storytelling and the nature poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, Lisa O'Neill's fifth album uses a voice full of raw grit and elemental wonder. Deep orchestral drones, bowed banjo and harmonium underpinning tracks like Old Note conjure an earthy mysticism where traditional…0
  9. 9Ragged Kingdom (2011)Ragged Kingdom (2011)Released 1 Jan 2011June Tabor and Oysterband reunited 21 years after Freedom and Rain, and the pairing still crackles. Tabor's dark, sorrowful contralto anchors muscular reworkings of traditional songs such as Bonny Bunch of Roses alongside Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart and a PJ Harvey song, showing old and…0
  10. 10Crown of Horn (1976)Crown of Horn (1976)Released 1 Jan 1976Martin Carthy changed English traditional guitar accompaniment with percussive picking, his own open tunings and a rhythmic insistence that pushes against the melody rather than cushioning it. On Crown of Horn, songs such as The Devil and the Feathery Wife show how close research and rhythmic…0