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Soema Montenegro: Círculo Radiante review – an intoxicating journey around South American song

This fifth album by the Argentinian singer, poet and shaman is a passionate celebration of Latin music – and the sun

You Are Wolf: Hare // Hunter // Moth // Ghost review – bursting with spirit

With Sam Lee and Robert Macfarlane guesting, Kerry Andrew shows a knack for experimentation, deploying playground rhymes, birdsong and even their radiator

Harp: Albion review – former Midlake frontman traipses through twilight

Tim Smith’s first album with Kathi Zung takes inspiration from William Blake and the Cure to create a landscape of 80s reverb and ghostly vocals

John Francis Flynn: Look Over the Wall, See the Sky review – a blast of the past

Expect white noise and growling guitars as the Dublin folk singer follows his acclaimed debut with more boundary-pushing takes on tradition

An 80th Birthday Concert for Bert Jansch review – moving homage to 60s folk guitar hero

Pentangle’s Jacqui McShee as well as Robert Plant, Bernard Butler and Sam Lee were among stellar acts celebrating the late musician in impressive style

ØXN: CYRM review – Irish folk debut full of unsettling dark magic

Featuring grisly trad tales, striking vocals, two members of Lankum and shades of PJ Harvey, this is a compelling record from Claddagh’s first signing for nearly two decades

Billy Bragg: The Roaring Forty review – four decades of flying the flag

Austere, melodic, at times heartbreaking – the music of Britain’s foremost protest singer gets an evocative overview in this nuanced compilation

Maple Glider: I Get Into Trouble review – delicate songs of rage and religious trauma

The Melbourne singer-songwriter’s second album catalogues the aftershocks of her Christian upbringing – and moments of joy in between

Sufjan Stevens: Javelin review – US indie folk hero hits every target

The singer-songwriter’s 10th album fuses his acoustic and electronic impulses to stunning effect

Ward Knútur Townes: Unanswered review – a captivating English-Canadian-Icelandic union

Born out of lockdown, the affinity between singer-songwriters Lucy Ward, Adyn Townes and Svavar Knútur bears fruit on an album of alluring melancholy

Sally Anne Morgan: Carrying review – resonant songs about nature and motherhood

The North Carolinian’s poetic lyrics, blissful vocals and thrumming banjo and fiddle combine on an album full of warmth and feeling

The Gentle Good: Galargan review – mesmerising Welsh folk songs for summer’s end

Gareth Bonello’s latest album sees him excavating his homeland’s folk classics, interpreting each with drowsy, melancholic voice, guitar, cello and piano

Boygenius review – Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus meet hysteria with humour

The US supergroup have legions of fans swooning – literally – as they crown a summer of female cultural-dominance with an epic outdoor show

Lankum review – eerie, overwhelming radical Irish folk already feels centuries old

The Mercury-nominated four-piece play every song as if they’re fighting with it, gasping for air before verses

Playing for the Man at the Door review – vital snapshot of mid-century African American music

Subtitled Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick 1958-1971, this 66-song set is full of gripping storytelling and arresting instrumentals from the American south

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  • The Beach Boys: We Gotta Groove review – box set of lost 70s music has all of Brian Wilson’s turmoil and talent
  • J Cole: The Fall Off review – rap legend’s final album is a self-obsessed hip-hop history lesson
  • Florence + the Machine review – ​a thrilling shift in tone towards stark, sombre catharsis
  • The Testament of Ann Lee with Daniel Blumberg and Amanda Seyfried review – yelps, bells and bruised beauty
  • LSO / Chan / Stankiewicz review – Matthews’s oboe concerto is dense and dynamic
  • Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show review – a thrilling ode to Boricua joy
  • Così Fan Tutte review – witty circus staging has its tongue firmly in its cheek
  • Maxïmo Park review – Newcastle band play the hell out of their jaggy and angsty debut album
  • Winter Olympics 2026 opening ceremony review – disco-dancing opera masters upstage Mariah Carey
  • Classical Mixtape: A Live Takeover review – one queue after another mars orchestral jamboree
  • Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi review – big, generous, provocative music-making on a small stage
  • Danny L Harle: Cerulean review – an earnest homage to early 00s bangers or a poor imitation?
  • Fabiano Do Nascimento & Vittor Santos Orquestra: Vila review – imaginative mood music from a virtuoso
  • Amidst the Shades album review – Ruby Hughes’ captivating Dowland tribute is steeped in delicious melancholy
  • The Goldberg Variations album review – Yunchan Lim untangles Bach’s complex web of threads
  • Mandy, Indiana: Urgh review – grimy, thrashing, purgative attack on injustice is the year’s first great album
  • Leonkoro Quartet review – vivid, intoxicating play from gleaming future stars
  • Sea Beneath the Skin/Song of the Earth review – sea, sand and ceremony as Mahler’s song cycle makes waves
  • Ed Sheeran review: pyrotechnics and technical hiccups in an ambitious, looping one-man show
  • Boris Godunov review – Bryn Terfel wild-eyed and barking in Mussorgsky’s relentless study of power
  • LSO/Treviño/ Kopatchinskaja review – he conducts with a coiled-spring muscularity
  • Julie Campiche: Unspoken review – a harpist’s tender, quietly radical hymn to women who endure
  • Leonkoro Quartet: Out of Vienna album review – a blazing exploration of Viennese modernism
  • Yumi Zouma: No Love Lost to Kindness review – New Zealand dream-poppers’ reinvention doesn’t go far enough
  • Strozzi: Virtuosissima Sirena album review – Laura Catrani enchants with music from a true Venetian revolutionary
  • Earth and Other Planets review – reimagined Holst with harmonica and a hoedown
  • Tyler Ballgame: For the First Time, Again review – cosplaying singer-songwriter courts comparisons to 1970s greats
  • Lucinda Williams review – Americana legend brilliantly rails against a world out of balance
  • Ben Goldscheider/ Richard Uttley review – a horn, a piano … and a braying donkey
  • LPO/Jurowski review – Mahler’s 10th is full of colour, and the composer’s pain, in Barshai’s completion

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