Alt.folk

White Denim: Fits

The Texan trio who hit the ground running a year ago with their impressively disparate debut Workout Holiday are back with an even wilder polyphonic follow-up. Appropriately titled Fits, this schizoid record veers from avant punk to psychedelic funk…

First Aid Kit - Drunken Trees

(Wichita) ALT.FOLK A curse on all precociously talented youth. With a combined age still several years less than this reviewer’s, the two teenage Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg have produced an astonishing debut, brimming with…

Doug Hoekstra - Blooming Roses

ALT-FOLK COUNTRY Now several solo albums and 14 years into his career (not counting his pre-solo time with Chicago outfit Bucket No.6), Nashville-based Hoekstra returns with another set of whispering, easy-on-the-ear songs. While Dylan, Cohen and…

Euchrid Eucrow

ALT.FOLK Two young women in full-length angel-white Victorian frocks flank a bearded young man in a tank top sitting on a stool. As he clutches his acoustic guitar for dear life, the dark-haired woman on his right puts her bow to her viola while the…

Y'all is Fantasy Island - Rescue Weekend

ALT.FOLK (Wise Blood Industries) On stage this Falkirk four-piece may remain capricious in tone and temperament but by first impressions this follow-up to the stark In Faceless Towns Forever could easily be dismissed as more of the same. The…

Joanna Newsom

City Halls, Glasgow, Sun 14 Jan

ALTERNATIVE FOLK Putting a gig by Ms Newsom on in the middle of January’s a good call, because her music’s just about the most snug thing ever invented. She plays a harp, for God’s sake. And sings in a voice that’s reminiscent of both Björk and a…