Andrew Curry writes: We’re halfway through the year, so we decided to ask the Salut! editorial team what they had been listening to so far this year. A bit like the article we ran at the end of 2024, the format here is ‘Something Old, Something New’—one record from our back catalogues, and one from this year or last year.
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Steve Peck, North America editor
Old: Every now and then, I drift back through the mists of time to the metaphorical cricket crease where I first found Roy Harper. The man has no shortage of classic albums to his name, but it’s my gateway to his music—the fabulous HQ/When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease—that I keep coming back to.
From hard-rocking numbers to tender ballads, Harper unleashes his full spectrum of sound and lyricism—never confined by the chalk lines of the cricket pitch.
While the album is best remembered for the transcendent title track, every song speaks to me through his sumptuous melodies, nimble fingerpicking and penetrating lyrics. Recently, I’ve been reveling in new additions to my Harper collection—including the oft-overlooked The Green Man—but I still can’t go long without pulling out my old vinyl and dropping HQ on the spinner.
New: Jim Ghedi is a wildman, and his new album Wasteland is a wild ride in a howling storm. After spending several years in Ireland, Ghedi returned to his English homeland and was deeply disturbed by what he found—the poor even poorer and the countryside being ravished.
The record’s sonic wall of sound—which is new to Ghedi’s work—punctuates his fierce lamentations with bold authority.
Like Lankum, he’s helping redefine folk music’s palette of expression. Despite the modernity, Ghedi’s voice is as old as the Druids, and as gnarled as ancient tree roots. The dark authenticity of folk clings to everything he touches. The album’s quieter moments, which recall his previous records, provide a welcome contrast to the untamed sounds. Sadness, anger, and beauty abound on Wasteland. Recommended for adventurous ears and seekers.
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Colin Randall, editor
Old: I could choose almost any Steeleye Span album that continues to give enormous pleasure decades after release. The one that has been most often played in the car of late is Parcel of Rogues from 1973.
The album emerged from the band’s involvement in a theatrical production of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.
It’s set against the background of Scotland’s Jacobite risings and the Highland Clearances. My go-to tracks – the mostly a cappella title song, its lyrics attributed to Robert Burns, and Cam Ye O’er Frae France – reflect that historical context while Robbery With Violins feels more like psychedelia meets Irish reels. Irresistible.
New: I have been aware of Amelia Coburn, a singer-songwriter (and ukelele player) from Middlesbrough, for three or four years. Only in 2025 did I hear her first album, Between the Moon and the Milkman, in full, and it is an inspired debut (and here on Bandcamp). I highlighted her delightful song in French (one of her three foreign languages), Le Fabuleux Destin de Sandra, in a recent Song of the Day feature.
But the album offers gems from start to finish as well as revealing a lively mind and an abundance of natural talent.
Perfect Storm is a rousing reminder of Covid – Coburn wrote it during lockdown – and Dublin Serenade recalls a dusk-to-dawn meander around the streets of the city when, as an impoverished student, she found the cost of a hotel prohibitive. Expect to hear a lot more about this rising star.
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Andrew Curry, deputy editor
Old: I tend to play music when I’m cooking, and I have found myself going back to Norma Waterson’s first, self-titled, solo record, which was released in 1996 when she was already in her 50s. The band is exceptional—it includes husband and daughter Martin and Eliza Carthy, the Thompson ‘twins’ (Richard and Danny—yes, I know they’re not related) with Roger Swallow on drums and the fine Hammond organ player Benmont Tench rounding out the sound.
The record was prompted by the producer John Chelew, who’d seen Waterson play a gig in Santa Monica and asked her why she had never recorded a solo record, even if it took a few years to get the musicians into a studio in Los Angeles.
A diverse choice of songs includes tracks from Grateful Dead, Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg and Nina Simone, but Norma Waterson makes them all sound as if they’re her own. My favourite is Richard Thompson’s laconic God Loves A Drunk:
“Will there be any bartenders up there in heaven?/ Will the pubs never close, will the glass never drain?”
New: It’s a toss-up for for my ‘new’ choice between two singers that I have seen this year. Ainsley Hammill is a young Scots singer who has certainly paid her dues since graduating from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and her extended apprenticeship certainly shows in her record Fable, released in January. The record includes a mix of lively self-written songs such as Machir Bay as well as a some imaginative versions of traditional songs, and an intriguing version of Sinnerman, associated with Nina Simone. When I reviewed her show in London for Salut! Live I had this to say:
“She stands comparison with the queen of Scots music, Capercaillie’s Karen Matheson.
“I don’t say this lightly. Hammill has a big voice, with a lot of variation. She’s as comfortable singing a traditional English language ballad as a Hebridean waulking song, and switches easily between the two traditions.”
Finally: The Irish musician Oisin Leech is well-known in Ireland as one half of The Lost Boys, and his first solo record, Cold Sea, was recorded in a cottage in Donegal with the the American guitarist and producer Steve Gunn. Cold Sea strongly evokes the places and shorelines of north-west Ireland.
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