Nina Nastasia review – a mettle-testing, memorable comeback
The American alt-folk singer returns after a 12-year hiatus to worshipful cheers, in a show that condenses her trauma into jagged bursts
Lankum: False Lankum review – folk radicals get in touch with their softer side
Without diluting their power or abandoning their gothic intensity, the Dublin group’s fourth album lulls the listener with songs of exquisite softness and deeply affecting harmony
Hack-Poets Guild: Blackletter Garland review – dark songs from a starry trio
Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann combine to revivify a rather gloomy collection of ancient songs
Unthank Smith: Nowhere and Everywhere review – folk veteran and Maxïmo Park man find joy
Rachel Unthank’s voice wraps softly around Paul Smith’s unfussy baritone on an otherworldly album that explores the songs of their mutual homeland
Fern Maddie review – tender and powerful performance of ballads old and new
The folk musician strips her music back to the bones, amplifying the emotional intensity in a cosy firelit space
Lucinda Williams review – dirt mixed with tears in an evening of consummate Americana
The singer-songerwriter leaned in to the precariousness of life as she paid tribute to lost friends, including Jeff Beck and Tom Petty
Ears of the People: Ekonting Songs from Senegal and the Gambia review – living lute songs of love and war
Stories of survival and self-expression suffuse this anthology exploring the ekonting, the three-string gourd instrument
Rozi Plain: Prize review – a thicket of riddles and gently warped folk
Plain leans into her eccentricities and goes far beyond the cotton-soft ambience of previous albums on her fifth
Kevin Morby: This Is a Photograph review – exemplary songwriter wrings light from darkness
Morby’s seventh album was inspired by sickness and mortality but his elegiac songs focus on life’s transience and joys
Fiona Soe Paing: Sand, Silt, Flint review – startling Scottish balladry with a global scope
The Scottish-Burmese singer evokes history, folk tales and atmospheres in this nicely uncanny set blending electronics and field recordings
The Mary Wallopers review – odes to sex, devilry and drink for a new generation
Irish folk’s young rabble-rousers stick two fingers up to the establishment with raucous reinterpretations of timeless tunes
Gaye Su Akyol: Anadolu Ejderi review – poetic Turkish dissident pop
The singer reflects on past loves, current politics and her once glorious Istanbul on this eclectic fourth album spanning folk to psych-rock
Mali Obomsawin: Sweet Tooth review – proud, vital marriage of folk and far-out jazz improv
In their freewheeling debut album, this artist from the Abenaki First Nation repatriates the music of their people
Marcus Mumford review – great songs, but no hoedown
O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, LondonFor this solo show, Mumford is justified in focusing on his album, one of the year’s best. But the venue and sound do it no favours
One Leg One Eye: And Take the Black Worm With Me review – gorgeousness and menace
Lankum mainstay Ian Lynch’s debut as One Leg One Eye is an immersive world of created sounds and raw, resonant singing