British Folk Music

Top 100 Best Folk & Alternative Albums of 2023

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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.

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Maypole on Fire: The Importance of Music in the Original ‘The Wicker Man’

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The musical delights lure you in before you’re ensnared like the doomed Police Sergeant.

By Chris Sasaguay

The Wicker Man (1973) is an early entry of the folk horror subgenre. It gave Christopher Lee his favorite role, keeping the danger from his portrayal as Dracula but leaving behind bloody fangs for something more concealed. This subtlety isn’t only for his character. Director Robin Hardy and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer use subtlely throughout the whole movie, making its shock ending that more shocking. The true power in unnerving the audience is not so much that fiery visual. It’s the music heard throughout. Italian-American musician Paul Giovanni created the soundtrack with musical support by British band, Magnet. Instead of relying upon dialogue exposition, the featured songs let the audience in on the pagan customs central to the story. From sexually-charged tunes to more somber pieces, the folk music disarms the movie’s audience as much as the climatic sacrifice succeeds in terrorizing.

Police Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) arrives at the island of Summerisle and quickly experiences the strange lifestyle of its pagan residents. As a devout Christian, this man of law and order is continuously made to be the outsider. What is baffling to him, is absolutely normalized to the island’s young and old. He’s searching for a missing girl, but it’s all an elaborate ploy to entrap Howie. The islanders plan to sacrifice him to their sun god, with the hopes it will help the upcoming crops.

Early on, Woodward’s character is standing within the pews of a church, not having left for the seaplane yet. Together with fellow parishioners, he sings the hymn, “The Lord’s My Shepherd.” It’s full of passion, the words meant to offer comfort. The church’s organ echoes all around. But from everyone’s wooden stance, it’s all so rigid. In fact, it could be considered joyless, despite the pious sense of fulfillment on display. Howie is standing next to a woman who is his fiancée, a character who doesn’t show up after this. For her one appearance, they share no kiss or any kind of intimacy, adding on to the conservative aspects to Howie’s character. This isn’t the last time “The Lord’s My Shepherd” is heard. But when it returns, the circumstances are far different and lonelier.

Once Howie is in the sky, Giovanni’s folk music begins with “Corn Rigs,” the vocals also performed by the composer. “I loved her most sincerely, I kissed her o’er and e’er again, among the rigs of barley,” and so it goes. The lyrics are taken from the poetry of 18th-century Robert Burns, old words like the old religion being practiced on the approaching island. There’s a twang from an acoustic guitar, making it sound quite peaceful. There is no obvious hint of the menace to come. Instead, there are hints to the sexual liberation of the pagans. Listening to the lyrics, it tells of a pair of lovers who use barley rigs as cover, a means to hide from moralistic eyes such as the Police Sergeant. On first watch, it may not seem evident, but there is an unsettling intention behind the music. It plays over the establishing shots captured by cinematographer Harry Waxman. There is so much ocean the plane passes over, Summerisle is truly cut off from the rest of the world.

The-Wicker-Man-film-Robin-Hardy

On land, Howie enters the Green Man Inn, getting stuck in the middle of a sexually-charged, rowdy chorus. Male islanders holler to “The Landlord’s Daughter,” directed towards Willow (Britt Ekland), the daughter of the Inn’s owner. But she watches in happiness. The Police Sergeant is the one unamused, listening to, “And when her name is mentioned, the parts of every gentleman do stand up at attention.” The loud voices instantly make Howie look uptight and out of place. Sex is on the mind of this community, but they don’t always lean towards being raunchy. As Howie heads to a guest room, the patrons downstairs ease their energy. Christopher Lee’s Lord Summerisle then makes an appearance, introducing Willow to a young man who she takes to her bedroom. The patrons glance upstairs as they sing to “Gently Johnny,” a ritual-like song acknowledging the bedroom antics. All the while, Lord Summerisle monologues over two snails mating outside, making the connection between nature and sex for this community. Howie tries to sleep but the sounds coming from Willow’s room keep him tossing and turning. Nothing explicit is shown but the patrons singing, “I put my hand all on her breast” and “I put my hand all on her thigh,” leave little to the imagination. For Howie, this premarital sexual freedom is startling. All around, humans and creatures alike are embracing what this God-fearing man denies himself.

The following day, the Police Sergeant watches a teacher and pupils dance around a maypole on the school yard. No wooden pews keep them in place, those have been left in the old church behind the festive maypole. The song is innocent at first, quick-paced and child-like. Then it continues. The kids merrily sing to sex, birth, and rebirth. Once someone dies, the islanders believe they are reincarnated as a tree, becoming one with the nature they worship. Upon a closer look, the school children are separated by gender. The boys are outside, worshiping the maypole. Inside the school house, the girls are listening to Miss Rose (Diane Cilento) talk about the phallic symbolism associated with it. On the mention of this, Howie storms into the classroom. He berates the teacher Miss Rose for tainting the young minds with what is essentially the topic of reproduction. The adults and now the children act in ways Howie can’t grapple with. And they do so with so much pleasure. Miss Rose holds another role, leading to a more mysterious entry on Giovanni’s soundtrack.

the wicker man 1973 image

The soft blows from a flute introduce “Fire Leap.” The school teacher watches over a group of nude women in a fertility ritual, surrounded by majestic standing stones. One by one they jump over a fire, chanting, “Take the flame inside you, burn and burn belong.” It’s very dream-like, made more so with the women’s voices low and whispery. Seeing the naked women in broad daylight makes Howie uncomfortable on another level. Then he gets targeted more directly.

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We need an English folk revival

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By Francis Young

The cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason recently expressed a preference for ‘folk tunes’ at the Last Night of the Proms over the singing of Rule Britannia! – and, whatever one may think of jettisoning Thomas Arne’s celebrated anthem of British liberty, Kanneh-Mason’s suggestion raises the question of what exactly English folk music is. England is not the first country that springs to mind when we think of a nation for whom traditional music is central to identity.

Shirley Collins
A previous British folk revivals took place in the ’50s-’60’s led by Ewan MacColl, Martin Carthy, the Watersons, and Shirley Collins (pictured)

 The importance of folk music to the self-understanding of many countries in Eastern Europe is so prominent that we encounter their traditional melodies and instruments annually in more or less embarrassing entries to the Eurovision Song Contest. Yet ask the average English man or woman in the street to name an English folk song or folk melody, and you may receive blank looks. And this is a specifically English problem – few Scots, after all, will be unaware of the repertoire of the bagpipes, and most Welsh people will have some awareness of their nation’s great tradition of choral singing – not to mention the crucial role of music in Irish national identity.

In retrospect, we might regret the absence of a great revival of folk culture in 20th-century England

One place where people may have come into contact with the English folk song tradition is, ironically, the Last Night of the Proms itself – where Sir Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs kept alive the sea shanty tradition – until its revival as a lockdown TikTok craze in 2021, that is. But apart from a brief period in the 1970s when interpretations of English folk by the likes of Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention were almost mainstream, English folk music has remained on the fringes of Britain’s musical scene.

As in other countries, there was a flurry of folk-song collecting in England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, inspiring a new style of music that evoked the simplicity of rural melodies. But there was no national revival in England underpinned by folk music – for the simple reason that England, as an imperial power and the victor of two world wars, was not in need of a folk revival to bolster, construct or revive its sense of nationhood.In retrospect, we might regret the absence of a great revival of folk culture in 20th-century England, as the redefinition of national identity suddenly came to prominence with the disintegration of Britain’s empire – and, indeed, the desire to recover some sort of folk understanding of Englishness might explain the folk-obsessed 1970s.

Thereafter folk music, song and dance slipped from view – often relegated to educational settings as the domain of children. However, while live folk music in pubs is now something of a rarity, there are other areas of folk music that are experiencing a revival. Morris Dancing is increasingly popular, and drawing the participation of young people as well as seasoned dancers.


The English Folk Dance and Song Society, founded by folk music collector Cecil Sharp in 1911, promotes English folk music through education, workshops and artist development programmes. As the Society itself acknowledges, however, defining exactly what English folk music is can be tricky. Traditionally, folk music consists of music passed on by ear without a known author or notation. But folk music is now often defined by a particular style grounded in traditional rural music. The danger with this perception that folk music needs to have a particular sound is that music remains fossilised in an imagined rural idyll. If folk music remains frozen it is, by definition, no longer of the folk – no longer the music spontaneously made by ordinary people. The ageing tribute band and the barn dance ceilidh band are, on one reading, creating folk music by offering their own interpretations of shared musical traditions – more so, perhaps, than meticulous re-creations of Victorian rural folk dancing.

Choosing which English folk songs we might hear at the Last Night of the Proms would be difficult. But one place to start is with what people know – the sea shanties popularised by TikTok (although the most prominent of those, ‘The Wellerman’, is actually from New Zealand), or perhaps an interpretation of Morris Dancing suitable for the Albert Hall. English folk music is far from dead, but it deserves to be better known.

Desert Island Discs – Shirley Collins, folk singer – BBC Sounds

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Shirley Collins, folk singer, shares the soundtrack of her life with Lauren Laverne.

Shirley Collins first enjoyed success as one of the leading figures in the British folk revival of the 1960s. She initially performed with her sister, Dolly Collins, and also collaborated with other folk luminaries to create some of the era’s most beloved albums.

In the past decade she has made an acclaimed return to the concert stage and the recording studio. Shirley was born in Sussex in 1935. She can still recall how her grandfather used to sing folk songs to comfort her while they were sheltering during German air raids in the early 1940s.

Alongside her career as a singer, in the 1950s she travelled to the American South with Alan Lomax, where they made field recordings of blues and folk musicians, helping to create a significant archive.

Later in her performing career, Shirley found that she could no longer sing, following a distressing betrayal in her private life. She stepped away from music and was silent for many years, taking on other work, including a stint in a job centre Then, in her 80s, she found her voice again.

In 2016 she released her first new album after a gap of almost four decades, and she has since released two more albums. Shirley lives in Sussex, not far from her childhood home. Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor

LISTEN at  Desert Island Discs – Shirley Collins, folk singer – BBC Sounds