James Yorkston is a genius! His whole career is a clear evidence of this statement. His new album with The Second Hand Orchestra was released Friday 22nd January on Domino Records. We totally loved it and wrote a few words about it (in Italian) here.

What He Says:
James writes “This beautiful album I made with The Second Hand Orchestra, a Swedish band ran by Karl-Jonas, a man I have known for a few years now. The Second Hand Orchestra hadn’t heard any of these songs before the sessions. I flew to Sweden and said my hellos, then we all sat round and set up our instruments. I would run through a song, once, perhaps twice, and simply encourage the musicians to react to what they were hearing. The engineer would press record and – voila – we’d have a song down. This here album is the result of eight such castings of the net. We all love it – it was a joy to make and is fresh, spontaneous, and full of life x”

Clara Mann makes soft “almost folk music” to make herself feel calm in a busy world. Now based in Bristol, Clara grew up in a small village in the South of France, and grew up with classical music always around her, from choral pieces to chamber music. She is a classically trained musician, playing piano and voice, with classical music playing a great part of her identity as a folk musician. She writes lo-fi songs to be played in the evening. She is one of the most exciting, original and engaging artists producing music right now. Her debut EP, Consolations, will be out soon on the wonderful english label Sad Club Records.

Liverpool band The Fernweh combine the baroque psychedelic sounds of ’60s bands like the Moody Blues and the Left Banke with British folk and a modern sonic punch. Their sound is made by three musicians who paid their dues as sidemen for years and used every sonic and melodic trick they learned along the way on their impressive self-titled first album, released in 2018.
The project started as an idea years before it became a reality. Guitarist Jamie Backhouse and keyboardist Austin Murphy, where at Glastonbury in 2007 with their band, where they were joined by bassist Ned Crowther, who was playing with its own band. The trio ended up sitting atop a hill discussing their shared love of classic American bands of the ’60s, psychedelia and British folk like Fairport Convention (whose album Liege and Lief became something of a guiding light for the trio.) Somewhere along the way, one of them suggested they should start a band. The sound they came up with was classic psychedelic pop with a huge swath of folky weirdness mixed in. The Fernweh’s debut self-titled album was released by Skeleton Key in late 2018. Their new single “The Wounds Of Love” is out now via bandcamp.

Describing themselves as Craft Batch Indie Rock, Brooklyn’s Andre Salvador and the Von Kings are built around the songs of Tim Cheplick. Their debut album takes inspiration from the likes of Elliot Smith, Camper Van Beethoven and Big Star and delivers something fresh, new and yet altogether comfortable and reassuring. Born in Wisconsin but raised on the East Coast, Cheplick has largely spent his time with a singular focus on making music wherever he is. Recording and putting out music under different monikers, Cheplick adopted the current band name and self-released Rock and Roll Springtime in 2016. A follow-up, This Is Play, came in 2017, the first to include Paul Provenzano who answered a “Drummer Wanted” flier in a record store for a gig on his birthday. For their debut LP on label Last Night From Glasgow, Cheplick and Provenzano headed to Nashville to record with producer Robin Eaton (Lionlimb, the Spinto Band) at Club Roar Studios. Here they laid the foundation for a new batch of songs, recording rhythm guitar and drums which Cheplick took home to build on and craft a close approximation of what he heard in his head.