The Editor of Folk Radio shares their top 100 Best Folk and Alternative albums of 2023, a diverse selection that also reflects the breadth of music that’s been covered over the past year.
By Alex Gallacher
These are unranked, so just dig in, enjoy and hopefully discover some new music along the way. Most of the blurb are excerpts from reviews – clicking on the title will, in most cases, take you to the album review, but not all albums listed here made it to the review (it’s just not possible to review every album) but in most cases, those that didn’t were featured in some way – either in a news piece or in one of the many Mixtapes and playlists.
There will be a separate list for Live Albums, Compilations, Reissues and EPs.
Bandcamp links are included – we encourage you to support the artists we’ve championed over 2023.
Alasdair Roberts – Grief in the Kitchen and Mirth in the Hall
…regardless of whether he is writing his own songs, working on those of other artists, or interpreting traditional material, his work has an overarching humanity, an intelligent and deep engagement with the world that shines through even on supernatural or fantastical songs like Grief In The Kitchen’s spooky closer The Holland Handkerchief. He may record a great deal of music, but the quality control is astoundingly high, and nearly three decades into his career, that quality shows no sign of letting up.
Maxine Funke – River Said
Maxine Funke’s output over the last few years has been consistently outstanding, and River Said shows her at her best and at her most varied. These are songs that gently demand attention and longer compositions that are profound, moving and mysterious all at once.
Hack-Poets Guild – Blackletter Garland
Blackletter Garland is highly impressive in many ways. It is both a wonderful collection of individual folk songs by three of our finest performers and an example of what can be achieved when those people share their skills. As such, it is more than the sum of its parts. It’s tempting to say that this is a blueprint for how folk music should be made, but prescriptive statements like that are narrow and limiting, and Blackletter Garland is the opposite of that. It shows many possible futures of folk music, all of them varied and vibrant.
ØXN – CYRM
The more experimental members of Dublin’s vibrant folk scene have been on blistering form this year. It is the sheer ambitiousness of ØXN, a quartet featuring Lankum’s Radie Peat along with singer/songwriter/composer Katie Kim, Eleanor Myler of kraut-shoegazers Percolator, and producer/engineer/multi-instrumentalist John ‘Spud’ Murphy, and their unwillingness to conform in any way to stereotypes that make them something of an outlier, even in a scene that is open to experimental music. It also makes them one of the most vital acts in that (or any) scene. This uncompromising debut album is like a monolith looming through fog.
Brigid Mae Power – Dream from the Deep Well
On Dream From The Deep Well, Brigid Mae Power has created a piece of art that resonates timelessly on a mythic level. In spite of or perhaps because of this, it is also a highly personal piece of art, brimming with the joy and sadness that hides in plain sight, in the minutiae of everyday life.
Emma Tricca – Aspirin Sun
It might be an album that captures change in its moment of occurring, but one thing hasn’t changed: Tricca is still one of our most valuable and interesting songwriters, capable of strange and beautiful sonic flights of fancy and unexpected lyrical turns. Aspirin Sun is her best yet.
John Francis Flynn – Look Over The Wall, See The Sky
Look Over the Wall, See the Sky is also an album that explores freedom of movement and, by extension, the breaking down of borders. Its title refers to a world beyond, a dream of freedom. It’s easy enough to draw parallels between Flynn’s boundary-breaking approach to music and the concepts he espouses. Easy and probably correct. And Flynn goes even further: there is something refreshingly, vividly utopian behind the darkness in these songs. If there were any doubts as to whether traditional songs can still be sharply meaningful in a contemporary musical setting, this album lays them to rest.
Sally Anne Morgan – Carrying
This awareness of the environment and the earth permeates Carrying. Still, the final track, Song for Arthur, is more of a declaration of love and protection for the newborn child, which is the overriding theme of this album. An acoustic piece (immediately lending a more innocent edge to the music), the tune comes in like a soothing lullaby, with sweeps of fiddle blending with a relaxed picked guitar line. Ending a set full of music that veers from uneasy, with reverb and pulsing electric guitars, to spare and organic, the gorgeous, imperfect bowed notes that accompany Sally Anne’s unambiguous lines of adoration in the second half of the song are somehow reassuring. In a world full of perils, both natural and unnatural, love can surely overcome all.
Adele H – Impermanence
Adele Pappalardo’s greatest asset is her voice: inimitable, malleable, dripping with passion and personality. The transition to piano-based songs on Impermanence has allowed that voice to flourish, which in turn has opened up new and intensely personal ways of writing and presenting songs. The resulting album transcends its varied influences and becomes a wonderful and, at times, cathartic work of art, brimming with confidence and bursting with important questions about womanhood, metaphysics and music.
Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay – Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay
Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay is an album that demonstrates the musical prowess and creativity of these two important guitarists of the UK scene. The music across twelve tracks is diverse and dynamic, ebbing and flowing like a river and evoking nature and the outdoors wonderfully, a particular strength of both players. Assured in its composition and immaculate in its execution, this one is a must.
James & The Giants – James & The Giants
James & The Giants might just be his most congenial work yet, veering damn close to all-round family entertainment. Toth offers sober musings for late-night booze hounds, with a wry literacy that echoes the late David McComb (The Triffids) and David Berman (Silver Jews). …Melancholy songs are so often the most emotionally honest. On this outstanding set, Toth brings to light his own humility and frailty, while asking us to take stock of our own.
Xylouris White – The Forest in Me
As Glenn said: I absolutely love The Forest in Me; it smacks of confidence and creativity and is happy to shift expectations and deliver a sound so different to previous albums while keeping its core structure of lute and drums present. Each song surprises and leaves you wanting more, and at thirty minutes long, it is just too tempting to spin the thing again. I’ve enjoyed this duo (trio?) since Goats came along in 2014, but this short, sharp and dynamic project is the one I’ve been waiting for.
Alice Gerrard – Sun to Sun
Despite the seriousness of its subjects, wit and warmth pervade every minute of Sun To Sun, from the lighthearted How Now Brown Cow and the brisk, banjo and fiddle-led instrumental December Daisy to the heart-stirring harmonies of Remember Us. It’s an album that acts both as a tonic and a kick in the pants: it reminds us of the enduring place of protest in folk music but also of the importance of humour and heart in life as well as in art. Sun To Sun is a career-high from a musician who has helped shape the landscape of American folk music.