Andrew Curry writes: Following on from Colin Randall’s piece yesterday, here’s what I’ve been listening to in 2025. Our slightly cheesy format is ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’, and it’s up to us as to how we interpret this. It’s worth saying that we did do a half-year round up of our New and Old listening on the site in July, which might also be worth dipping into. I know it wrecks the rhyme pattern, but I’m going to start with the New artists, who probably need our support a bit more.
Something New
I saw the three Gaelic singers who make up Sian when they were accompanying the electro-folk band Niteworks at one of their final concerts last year, and their recent record araon is delightful. It was Album of the Year at the Scots Trad Music Awards, and also seems to be getting some attention, judging by the number of hits they are getting on Spotify. Sian is Ellen MacDonald, Eilidh Cormack, and Ceitlin Lilidh, and it exists to promote music in Gaelic written by women.
araon includes a mix of old and new Gaelic songs, and a Gaelic translation—as Smeòrach— of the Christine McVie song Songbird. They work with the talented Scottish musician Innes White, and he co-produced araon with Nitework’s Innes Strachan. The record transports you instantly to the Scottish Hebrides while its arrangements are contemporary rather than trad.
New to me this year, at least in concert, were Kieron Goss and Annie Kinsella, although their album, Oh The Starlings was released in 2019: the tour to promote it was written off by the pandemic. They eventually got to London in April this year to showcase the record, and it is well worth a listen. They should have a new record out in 2026.
Another first in 2025: I finally managed to catch Rhiannon Giddens live, playing In London with the multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi and the kora player Seckou Keita. I’ve tried to see her before but her concerts sell out in days. She is (in her words) a recovering opera singer whose first love now is the banjo, and listening to the interplay of banjo and kora revealed a whole shared musical history between the two instruments.
Something Old
I’ve found myself going back through the year to Marianne Faithfull’s folk repertoire, which I wrote about here after her death in January. The release of Dick Gaughan’s 1970s BBC recordings has been a source of pleasure—huge credit to the music writer Colin Harper for shepherding those into print after all these years. You can sample them on Bandcamp—and buy the record there. There are rumours that some of Gaughan’s other ‘70s recording, which have been buried in the cellars of Celtic Music for years, might see the light next year.
Something borrowed
I’m a fan of Thea Gilmore—her seasonal record Strange Communion might be the best seasonal folk record there is, although Watersons fans would disagree. Her 2025 record These Quiet Friends is a collection of covers, from originals by Blur, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, the Velvet Underground and REM, among others. She says the songs on the record “have been like mates to me”, providing “warmth, strength, or even just fun.” Listening to the stripped back arrangements—from the sparse version of Cabaret which opens the record—you can hear how this has allowed her to make the songs her own. This record has become a bit of a friend to me this year as well.
The Wandering Hearts’ song-for-song remake of Deja Vu, the 1970 record by Crosby Stills Nash and Young, also deserves a mention here. I listened to it in August and wrote about it on the site.
Something Blues
After the great guitarist Steve Cropper died in November, Richard Williams’s obituary in The Guardian pointed me to his work with Levon Helm and the RCO All Stars, which definitely comes into the blues category. Cropper was best known for being part of the house band at Stax Records, one of the labels that is forever associated with the sound of ‘60s and ‘70s soul music. Three-quarters of that band, who also recorded as Booker T and the MGs, were also in the studio for these recordings, in 1977.
—
And do visit our Facebook group!
Leave a Reply