I bumped into Henry Parker's music for the first time at a folk festival a couple of years back, where I sat open-mouthed, wondering quite how I'd managed to miss the guy up until this point in my life. At the time, Parker was promoting an instrumental LP, made with fellow guitarist David Ian Roberts, though he'd previously released a pair of brilliant solo albums, 'Silent Spring' in 2019 and 'Lammas Fair' in 2021, both of which hastily found their way into my record collection. In addition to being a gifted singer/songwriter, Henry is a guitar tutor and a lover of the great outdoors. His 2026 EP 'The Dark Peak', '...a deeply researched and reflective piece of landscape music, in honour of the moors of Bleaklow and the Upper Derwent ridges...', is a collection of atmospheric solo guitar instrumentals, complimented by the sounds of nature, tiding us over until a new full length LP in 2027.
Gosh, 'Evergreen in Your Mind' is a gorgeous album. Juni Habel's third LP, her first in three years, is a warm affair, gently leaning towards (but not quite) freak-folk with hints of wistful psychedelia. Musical accompaniment is kept to a minimum, often little more than a single, gently plucked, nylon stringed acoustic guitar, pushing Juni's soft voice front and centre. The eleven songs were recorded around her home and in the school where she works, unplanned creaking chairs and rattling keys only adding to the tender intimacy of the performances.
At one time or another, many of us music nerds will have felt the comfortable certainty of finding a record label that we could trust absolutely. I've had that feeling myself a number of times over the years - Trojan, Two Tone, Sugarhill for instance, each, for a certain period at least, a trademark of quality. Step forward Broadside Hacks, my current go-to comfort zone of a record label. For the past couple of years, when push notifications ping to inform me of a forthcoming new release, I know that I can confidently open my wallet and hand over the readies.
There'll be be more Broadside Hacks gubbins before this short series is out, but for today I'm focusing my attention on 'Tinderbox', the debut LP from Myer U Clark. Atypically, when compared to much of the label's output, 'Tinderbox' isn't made up of contemporary renderings of the trad/arr songbook, but rather is a warm and wonky self-penned affair, with echoes of the Kevin Ayers end of the Canterbury Scene. Myer's music has a distinct, quirky charm that only tightens its grip with successive listens. One to spend time with.
The nights are drawing in - there's no getting around it, 2026 is winding down. It feels like only a couple of months have passed since we reduced and sold off the last of the 2025 Christmas Puds at work, yet in the middle of September I found myself making room on the shelves for the first of this year's stock. Time flies when you're having fun.
Within a few short weeks, retrospective blogposts will begin to pop up round this neck of the woods, reminding me of all the great music I missed over the past 12 months and causing a serious dent my wallet as I attempt to catch up. I'll be deep in the retail trenches by that point, so if you'll forgive me, I'm going to start early, dropping the odd post about memorable gigs I've attended and notable LPs I've tucked under my arm throughout 2026.
Take Shane Parish's most recent offering for instance. Already a well established guitarist in the trad/arr arena, Parish's 'Autechre Guitar', improbably, does what it says on the tin. He took a bunch of tunes from the first four Autechre records and literally, painstakingly, transcribed them for solo acoustic guitar, with no additional effects or overdubbing. Now I can't claim to be an expert on Autechre's oeuvre, but I do know that reinterpreting their stuff for a single unaccompanied acoustic instrument can't be a walk in the park, yet despite the tight compositional structure and minimal approach, 'Autechre Guitar' is an intimate, riveting listen that I've returned to consistently since its release in February.
I sometimes feel that all I do is write about Robyn Hitchcock, though a quick look through my back pages shows that I have in fact been displaying admirable restraint and that he hasn't actually darkened the doors of this here blog since the Spring of 2023. Time for a catch-up then.
Last Wednesday I did a 136 mile round trip to The Portland Arms in Cambridge to see Robyn and his superb pick-up band tear through a swathe of songs from his catalogue (plus a few covers), many of which were written within walking distance of the venue in the 1970s & 80s. He took a moment before opening the show, '...I first played at the Portland Arms 52 years ago...and looking round the audience, I see some familiar faces...' I got home a little after midnight, managing around 3½ hours sleep before my 4am alarm roused me for work.
The following evening's jaunt was a mere 80 mile round trip to see Robyn again in Ipswich, this time without a full band. He kicked things off with a magnificent 'Ghost Ship', a long time favourite of your humble author, and was ten songs into the set before we got a repeat from the Cambridge show. The gig ran a little late and I arrived home around midnight once again, zonking out until rudely awakened by that pesky 4am alarm. Needless to say, Friday at work was a bit of a struggle, but completely worth it. Emma Swift opened for Robyn on both nights and was absolutely stunning.
4 years ago, I was among the audience in Norwich for the debut public performance of 'I Am This Thing', the song that opens Robyn's latest LP 'The Confuser'. It's become a staple in his sets these days, whatever the onstage configuration, and contains the particularly lovely lines - '...I grew out of somebody else, she wore a wedding ring, and when I decompose I will be part of everything...'
I watched one of those YouTube ranking videos recently, where the artist under the microscope was Neil Young and it struck me then how much of his later output I just don't know. Sure, Young's back catalogue has been swelled even further in recent years thanks to his ongoing Archive series, but I'm talking about the actual studio albums - I didn't even recognise the titles of many of the 21st century records. Boy am I out of touch.
A brief flick through his discography reveals exactly when I got off the Neil bus - curiously, it was immediately following two of my favourites of all his albums, 1994's 'Sleeps With Angels' and 'Mirror Ball', the Pearl Jam collaboration from the following year. Then there's a long, oblivious, gap until 2014's lovely low-fi experiment 'A Letter Home' and after that another 15 or so studio albums that I have absolutely no knowledge of.
I'm no Pearl Jam fan, but 'Mirror Ball' really worked for me - I even sang a couple of songs from the album at a local Neil Young covers show at the time. Where 'Mirror Ball' rocks, its predecessor, 'Sleeps With Angels', provides a sombre counterpoint (save for the abysmal, aptly titled, 'Piece of Crap'), the highlight of which is the magnificent 'Change Your Mind'.
Released 53 years ago today, 'Faust IV' was, remarkably, the band's third LP of 1973. I (along with many of my age group I suspect) originally bumped into Faust via 'The Faust Tapes', a budget (49p!) album issued five months earlier, that my Glam-infused brain struggled to make head or tails of initially and was latterly, accurately, described by Wire magazine as showcasing '...sonic collage at its best...' Also released in 1973 was 'Outside the Dream Syndicate', Faust's fabulous collaboration with Tony Conrad, an album that I didn't actually hear for the first time until I was significantly longer in the tooth.
'Faust IV' kicks off with the epic droning 'Krautrock', running just shy of 12 minutes. When an expanded reissue of the album appeared in 2006, an equally lengthy, though slightly more abrasive Peel Session recording of 'Krautrock' was among the extra tracks and it's that particular version I offer here.
Last week I took a bus over to the town I work in and walked home along country footpaths. I've done the jaunt before, more than once, but was trying out a new route this time. I estimated that it would take around 1¾ hours and for the first few miles all was going swimmingly, then I hit the first of two sweetcorn fields I'd have to cross. Footpaths should be maintained by the land owner, regardless of whether or not there's a crop in the field, so I followed the wooden 'Public Footpath' sign into the field, which was only slightly overgrown at this point. As I pressed on, the worn down path beneath my feet became gradually less obvious as previous walkers had presumably given up the ghost and turned round. By the time I realised that the footpath was completely gone and I couldn't actually walk any further, the sweetcorn surrounding me was over head height - I felt disorientated and even a little panicky. For the photo below I was holding the camera up over my head and shooting blind. It took me some time to hack my way out, imagining I was roughly retracing my steps, but I actually emerged from the corn some distance from where I entered it, such was my disorientation. Long story short, taking a series of alternative footpaths around the field instead of walking across it added considerably to my step count.
Fortunately the second sweetcorn field, a mile or so further on, was perfectly maintained, offering a clear cut footpath straight through the middle of the towering crop - you can see it disappearing into the distance in the photo at the top of this post. A short while later however, the next phase of my pre-planned walk was scuppered by a stretch of country footpath that had been officially closed by the Parish Council, damaged by off-road vehicles apparently, necessitating yet another detour for me. I eventually arrived home, wearier than anticipated, more than three hours after setting off.
Here's The Coral, summoning the spirit of early Pink Floyd I feel, with an appropriately titled tune from their 2004 LP 'Nightfreak and the Sons of Becker'.
As we turn the corner of the year, I find that I've already posted on, and generally interacted with, this little corner of the internet more regularly in the first six months of 2026 than in the entirety of both 2024 and 2025, something I'm quietly pleased about, particularly given that I've not really been in a great place for the last month or so. What strikes me though, leafing through my back pages, is that I've barely made mention of the records I've purchased or of the many gigs I've attended so far this year, an oversight on my part and something I'll attempt to rectify as we forge ahead through the second half of 2026.
Brown Wimpenny are a Manchester folk collective whose membership currently stands at 11, down from an earlier, somewhat daunting, 25. They've been playing live for over two years and finally released their debut LP last month, on the ever magnificent Broadside Hacks label. The record bursts at the seams with richly drawn characters, largely from the Northern English tradition, and is by turns angry, rambunctious or, in the case of Old Molly Metcalfe, really quite moving. This ancient tale of sheep-counting in the North Riding of Yorkshire is based upon an accappella piece by the late (and really bloody great) Jake Thackray, whose voice is heard in the song's introduction.
(As a bonus, I've included a 1971 BBC shiny floor clip of Old Molly Metcalfe from Jake, which is honestly worth four minutes of everyone's time).
The ultra-rare quadruple Swedeface - don't try this at home kids!
Composer, producer and all-round keyboard maestro Dave Greenslade died earlier this week, at the age of 83. Following a short stint with Geno Washington's Ram Jam Band in 1968, Dave joined British jazz-rock heavyweights Colosseum, staying until their split in late 1971, after which came the band that bore his name. I first crossed paths with Greenslade in late 1973, via a friend who had their second LP 'Bedside Manners Are Extra' and quickly became a firm fan. All these years later, Greenslade's four original albums remain in my collection and whenever I play one of them, I invariably end up playing them all.
From 'Time and Tide', the band's final LP (and my own favourite), 'Catalan' is a fine showcase for Dave Greenslade's dexterity on the ivories.
I'm just back from Leeds, where a small group of us blogging types (and available partners) assembled for a couple of days to hang out, waffle relentlessly, amble aimlessly, imbibe fine ales and scoff top scran. These occasions are always over far too quickly and, before we knew it, hugs and handshakes were being exchanged as we headed off in separate directions for home. In spite of working in a busy supermarket, my life these days is a fairly solitary one, so I particularly treasure such get-togethers with like minded souls - a pinprick of brightness in an increasingly dark and unpleasant world.
As my train trundled south-eastwards out of Leeds, I cranked up some tunes to soundtrack the passing scenery and my melancholy mood. By chance one of the first to hit my eardrums was 'Spin Me Endless in the Universe' by Richard Youngs, which perfectly suited my disposition in that moment. As of 2026 Youngs has put out close to 300 albums, ranging from electronic squalls to banging drum & bass, musique concrète to epic ambient drones. This 2013 performance, however, finds Richard alone in a studio with just an acoustic guitar and his own untreated voice. It's a thing of beauty and is dedicated to the BlogCon'26 posse.
The moment is almost upon us, the hostelries of Leeds are checking stock levels and polishing their glasses in anticipation of the latest instalment of the annual BlogCon, which commences on Monday. I understand that Alyson has already booked us into a couple of splendid looking eating establishments and I've no doubt at all that John Medd is ready to guide us towards the finest alehouses the city has to offer. C will be there, Ernie too and I believe that Walter is flying in once again. I'm a little hazy as to who else is joining in the fun, though needless to say everyone is welcome. Those that can't be with us this time around will be missed that's for sure and will have a glass or two raised to them over our three days together. As usual I've done little by way of research myself, I'm more than happy to go with the flow. As long as I have coffee in the morning, a beer in the evening and good company throughout the day, I'm all set.
Leeds born surrealist, absurdist and all round genius Glen Baxter died in March, a couple of weeks after his 82nd birthday. Baxter's work has loomed large in my life since the early 1980s and several volumes sit on my shelves to this day. I don't believe there's any official recognition of his heritage in Leeds, but there certainly should be.
My floorboards groan under the weight of Miles Davis records and the records that his music has guided me towards. Today marks the great man's centenary and to celebrate this milestone (excuse the pun) I've spent the last few weeks revisiting his catalogue. My go-to period runs from 1969's 'In a Silent Way' through to 1974's 'Get Up With It', seven studio albums and three live sets, the majority of them doubles and many of which have been greatly expanded in recent years by the release of multi-disc complete session box-sets. It's a truly monumental run of music and the albums immediately preceding and following this rich seam are none too shabby either.
Here's something recorded in 1969, though not released until 1974's 'Big Fun'. In spite of being given just the one title on the cover and label, it's actually a medley of 'Great Expectations/Orange Lady', altogether a sprawling, slightly eerie, piece, particularly when the 'Orange Lady' segment kicks in after around 13 minutes.
Yesterday evening saw the final ever Late Show with Stephen Colbert, following its cancellation by the CBS network. Colbert's tenure ends after eleven years, the past nine of them at No.1 in the ratings. The blame for the scrapping of the Late Show franchise has been widely placed in the hands of the current US administration, who have individually and collectively borne the brunt of Colbert's hilariously withering political analysis, delivered during his monologues at the top of each show.
I was lucky enough to attend recordings of The Late Show while visiting my cousin and her family in both 2023 and 2025 and sitting in the historic Ed Sullivan Theatre is a hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck experience I can tell you. In the attached video, Colbert leads a short guided tour of his set and surroundings, touching on a little of the theatre's back story.
Over the past few years, an occasional feature of the show has been the amusingly titled Colbert Questionert, where a celebrity guest is asked 15 quick-fire questions, a mixture of the deep and the flippant, with the aim to become truly 'known' by Stephen - there are plenty of examples available to peruse on YouTube. To mark the end of The Late Show, as a two time former attendee, I'm now taking the Colbert Questionert.
1. What’s the best sandwich?
Eye-wateringly strong cheddar, with thinly sliced red onion and sweet chili sauce.
2. What’s one thing you own that you really should throw out?
I have two large dolls of my Mum's from when she was a kid in the early 1930s. They're in a box together with a selection of baby clothes that were worn by my brother, the child my parents lost in unbearably tragic circumstances two years before I came along. The contents of the box aren't directly connected to me, have no commercial value and I have no-one to pass them on to, yet, over 15 years after Mum's death, I can't bring myself to part with them.
3. What is the scariest animal?
Any animal protecting its young. A couple of summers ago I made the rookie mistake of walking between a cow and its calf while crossing a field in the middle of nowhere. I was a good distance from both animals, but the cow was not amused and became quite agitated. They are intimidatingly large up close. Bulls, of course, even more so.
4. Apples or oranges?
Apples.
5. Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?
Many, many times, since I was a very young kid going to speedway matches with my Dad. Later musicians, I still get LPs signed today if I get the chance.
6. What do you think happens when we die?
The rest is silence.
7. Earliest memory?
I have a couple of early memories, both involve me crying hysterically. One was falling down the stairs at home, the other was temporarily losing sight of Mum & Dad while shopping in Clacton-on-Sea. I would've been 3-4 years of age on both occasions. Also, come to think of it, my first day at school, when I became so hysterical that the staff had to call Mum in to take me home and calm me down. What a melodramatic child I was in 1964.
8. Favourite smell?
Really good coffee.
9. Least favourite smell?
Boiling beetroot. It felt as if my aunt, who lived upstairs from me when I was a child, boiled beetroot morning, noon and night - I can still smell the gag-inducing aroma now. Also, I can't let this question pass with mentioning mushrooms - the smell, the texture, the taste. They truly are the devil's shite.
10. Exercise: worth it?
Absolutely, physically and mentally. I'm only sorry that I left it relatively late in life to figure that out.
11. Flat or sparkling?
Beer flat, water sparkling.
12. Most used app on your phone?
Pocket Casts. I listen to podcasts by day and night.
13. You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it? (Colbert points out that this doesn’t mean listening to it on repeat, but every time you choose to listen to music this is the only song you’ll hear).
The piece of music I could literally listen to on a permanent loop is 'Circle in the Round' by Miles Davis, though given that it's 30+ minutes long I'm probably bending the rules a bit. If we're talking about a normal length song, '1952 Vincent Black Lightning' by Richard Thompson is very difficult to beat, particularly a live acoustic version.
14. Window or aisle?
If we're talking flying, it makes little difference. I'll have no legroom either way and spend the entire flight in a state of extreme anxiety. For ground transportation I'll take a window.
Ah, the old double exposure. When the film didn't wind on completely and you ended up with a photo of a zebra superimposed over that lovely view of your garden. I have a few such happy accidents in my own family archive, though I strongly suspect that today's anonymous example is a very deliberate one. I can offer no information or explanation for the shot, other than it was part of a job lot of similar ephemera that I purchased at auction a decade ago, though one can imagine an enthusiastic offspring directing their parents to remain completely still while moving their respective heads from one shoulder to the other between clicks.
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A considerable amount of record company money was thrown at young guitar bands in the mid-1990s. Good, bad or indifferent, many were given a chance to make a single or two and perhaps, if they were very fortunate, a whole album. Coming straight outta the Lake District, TC: Hug was one such band, who gave it their best shot for a couple of years before falling off the map. They deserved better. Their songwriting was strong and they weren't afraid to throw in the odd curveball every now and then. 'Two Heads' initially appeared on the b-side of TC: Hug's debut single 'Day Today' in the summer of '96, before being rejigged (to its detriment I reckon) for their one and only album 'Pie-MONDO' early the following year. This, needless to say, is the first of those versions.
Anita Ward went to No.1 on both sides of the Atlantic in 1979 with 'Ring My Bell' and, before the year was out, UK lovers rock trio Blood Sisters put out a bass driven cover of the massive hit. They really were blood sisters too - Ouida, Moira and Yvonne McCarthy. Keeping the family theme going, the band on the recording consisted of five brothers - Errol, E. Lloyd, Jerry, Trevor and Paul Robinson, who would go on to issue a couple of albums of their own in the early 1980s, under the One Blood moniker. E. Lloyd Robinson's bassline is even more prominent on the flipside of the 'Ring My Bell' 12", titled, not unreasonably, 'One Blood Dub'. Blood Sisters issued a mere handful of singles during their recording career, though, as of late last year at least, they are still performing in and around London.
I found 'One Blood Dub' lurking on an old hard drive in an anonymous folder of similar vinyl rips. I've no idea where I got it from and in truth the contents are a bit of a mixed bag, but it does contain one or two other dubs worthy of attention that I might swing back to somewhere down the line.
Milkweed is an experimental gothic folk-noir duo, responsible for 'Remscéla', an LP created with banjos, loops, found sounds and glitchy, unsettling vocals. It was very possibly my album of 2025, certainly one of my most played. At the end of the year, they also reissued two earlier cassette only releases, 'The Mound People' and 'Folklore 1979', on vinyl for the first time. The band's lyrics are inspired by folkloric texts and their music is is lo-fi and haunting, claustrophobically enveloping the listener like a dense fog. I was lucky enough to see Milkweed perform twice last year, the first time was in my own home town, where the photo above was taken.
In January, a notable anniversary slipped quietly by while I was looking the other way - David Bowie's 'Station to Station' turned 50. It can be terrifying stuff, this aging malarky. The album came a mere 10 months after 'Young Americans' and just a little over 4 years after my proper introduction to the man via 'Hunky Dory'. In real time, the gaps between Bowie's releases felt unremarkable because, as Paul Weller noted, '...life is timeless, days are long when you're young...', but looking back at his extraordinary 1970s output (which for me actually begins with 1969's 'Space Oddity' and ends 9 months into the 1980s with 'Scary Monsters'), it's clearly unsustainably prolific in the long term. 13 studio albums, 2 live sets, a clutch of stand alone singles plus all of the unreleased material that has surfaced subsequently, is considerably more than most artists create over an entire career. What a time to be alive. Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven.
Cosmic Appalachia isn't a descriptor that you come across every day, though in the case of Eight Point Star's 2021 self-titled debut, it's an apt one. Following last year's terrific 'Tom Winter, Tom Spring' LP, created in cahoots with long time favourite of this parish C. Joynes, I've been dipping in and out of American fiddler Mike Gangloff's extensive back catalogue, some of which I was familiar with, but, given the sheer breadth of his collaborations, much of it I was not. Eight Point Star is, as of this writing, a one-off project, with Gangloff and fellow Virginians Tim Thornton, Matt Peyton and Isak Howell on a variety of guitars, fiddles and sruti boxes, creating a series of far-out ragas that effortlessly burrow their way into earworm territory. Take the descending fiddle refrain in 'Winchester's Dream' for example - it's catchy as hell, but trickier than it seems and just lately I find myself unconsciously trying to whistle it, without success.
Fate had a damn good crack at scuppering my birthday week plans. Firstly, while dressing for work the week before last, my back went into spasm, both agonising and scary given that it came out of the blue. I couldn't really move without considerable pain for a few days, after which it gradually eased, though a fortnight on it still isn't right. I never pull a sickie, so my boss knew it must be something serious when I called the store in some distress. By Thursday I was mobile enough to welcome my cousin and her husband for their long planned stay, during which we enjoyed a number of local excursions in the warm, spring weather, including a jaunt over to Snape Maltings where Barbara Hepworth's 'Family of Man' looked particularly majestic standing before the reedbeds of the Alde estuary. The last time I visited Snape the piece was absent, so it was nice to see it back in situ. The hand of fate hadn't quite finished trying to put a spanner in the works though, as a Tube strike had been belatedly announced for the very day of the family reunion in London that I mentioned in my previous post. But, in spite of all the obstacles, each of us somehow made it to the Euston pub at roughly the appointed time and enjoyed a memorable, if all too brief, few hours together.
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