Browsing Tag

Acoustic Folk

Early in the Morning by Soul Zimon & His Kozmic Combinations Glows with Sleepy Languid Beauty

Posted on 14 April 2026

Soul Zimon & His Kozmic Combinations swept a masterstroke of folk across the airwaves with the release of Early in the Morning. Melodically, it is intimate enough to feel like the gently plucked guitar strings were specifically cut as the key to your own soul, as you feel the resonance of the release pouring in.

Zimon captures the sleepy, languid beauty of daybreak, the weariness of pulling yourself into consciousness and the tendency to start seeking, to start reaching. If we’re lucky, it’s on the next pillow, but for many, the reaching renders nothingness into fruition, and that absence is hauntingly echoed through this warm yet wistful stunner of a release. There’s nothing overworked here, just honest phrasing, deft melodic restraint and a feel for emotional detail that lands right in the chest. It’s a lovely, low-burning reminder that folk still has the power to say the most with the least.

Rooted in a Swedish take on countryfolk-blues and drawing from the golden age of folk, Americana and country music, Soul Zimon carries the kind of stripped-back sincerity that calls to mind the inward pull of Townes Van Zandt, the earth-worn tenderness of early Neil Young and the plainspoken ache of John Prine. That lineage sits naturally in the song without ever turning it into pastiche.

Early in the Morning is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Soul-Folk Serenity and Autumnal Longing as Jordan Renzi Drifts Through ‘September’

Posted on 21 March 2026

The other seasons rarely hold a candle to the serenity of autumn, which is why Jordan Renzi’s September, taken from her LP On Your Side, hits with such arresting emotional clarity. She envelopes you in that liminal shift between light and loss, where warmth clings to the air even as the world braces for winter’s inevitability. In this soul-folk meditation, love lingers in the season like a soft bruise you press just to feel something true, colouring the track with a melancholy that drifts into soft remembrance.

Minimalist yet sonorously resolute, the arrangement Renzi chose for September is timelessly evocative. Gentle finger-picked guitars ascend above the quiver of violin strings; the tempo is guided by a quiet, steady pulse that fades from conscious awareness the moment you fall under the seraphic sublimity of her harmonic warmth. There’s power within the quiescence of her delivery, a kind of unforced grace that lets the emotional weight land without theatrics. Her full-bodied vocals refuse to be diluted by the breathy indie-folk trend; they carry the weight of someone who knows exactly what it is to want to eternalise a fleeting connection and protect it from the eventual sting of separation.

As a fusionist of high-lonesome folk and contemporary soul, Renzi has long been known for her raw honesty and poetic sensibility. Her reputation across Cape Cod’s scene owes as much to that emotional candour as to the accolades she’s received, including the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod’s 2017 Fellowship in Performing Arts.

September is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

FirelightX3 Summoned Celtic Myth and Divine Femininity in the Enchanted Folk Serenity of ‘The Fairies Song’

Posted on 9 March 2026

FirelightX3, also known as the Music Fairy, is an artist capable of transforming the rich annals of Celtic folk history into spectral fantasy. In her latest orchestrally guided single, The Fairies Song, she invites listeners to transcend to an enchanted nirvana of escapism from modernism. Drawing on the power of her lineage, she celebrates divine feminine strength while shaping an arcanely ornate soundtrack that leaves the mind lingering in the solace of the world as we once knew it; a world steeped in reverence for nature and mysticism.

The composition unfolds with a gentle, orchestrally guided framework that allows the folkloric atmosphere to breathe into the storytelling traditions embedded within Celtic folk arrangement. The independent singer-songwriter’s vocal delivery drifts with ethereally striking power as she leads listeners to a sonic forgotten woodland gathering where folklore and feminine power gracefully reign.

The heart of the song lies in its dedication. FirelightX3 wrote and composed The Fairies Song as a tribute to the women in her family, honouring five generations through the imaginative vision of their fairy forms. Her great-grandmother, grandmother, aunts, daughters, and their daughters are celebrated within this mythical framing, transforming lineage into lyrical folklore.

Working independently, FirelightX3 continues to shape a catalogue guided by Celtic themes, fantasy storytelling, and personal heritage. Through The Fairies Song, she offers listeners a momentary refuge in a mystical landscape where ancestry, nature, and imagination intertwine.

The Fairies Song is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

‘Oh, the White Death’ ties mythic mortality to modern consciousness through the threads of Leiting & Van Kammen’s folky post-rock poetry

Posted on 18 December 2025

Leiting & Van Kammen dig through the annals of history to parable what still remains in modernity in Oh, the White Death, excavating ancient, immortal corners of the soul and tying us to our roots through traditional European folk instrumentation. As one of the standout compositions on their concept EP Death’s Dowry, the piece leans into atmospheric post-rock aesthetics while its accordant cacophony of folk strings resounds, reverberates, and angularly strikes with melodic fortitude. The vocals project as a sermonic hymn, spilling dark imagery to paint a portrait of how we all live with death hanging above us, trying to evade its gaze as we fill our worlds with heartbreak, hope and faith.

Based in Somers, Wisconsin, the duo shaped Death’s Dowry as a concept EP centred on Death as witness rather than villain, tracing legendary figures such as Saint Olga of Kyiv, Simo Häyhä and the Finnish tale of Lalli and the Bishop. They self-recorded and produced the collection, bringing together vocals, acoustic guitar, mandolin and cello into sparse, cinematic arrangements later shaped by mixer and mastering engineer Rob Kleiner.

Oh, the White Death channels their vision with particular force; it reaches the epitome of profound by leaving expansive room for interpretation as you absorb poetry that nestles into contours of consciousness rarely touched. Passive listening feels implausible while digging through this stridently impassioned, anthropologically macabre fable that wedges itself between mythology, mortality and melody. Against the skeletal hush of winter imagery, the song thrives as a reminder of how the stories we inherit can still mirror our own evasions and reckonings.

Oh, the White Death is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

UK Folk singer-songwriter SOPE rendered ‘Real Love’ into his debut EP, Frame 1

Posted on 7 November 2025

SOPE has given us a teaser of what’s to come on his debut EP, which is set to arrive in early 2023. Just as it feels like there’s another world between your waking world and sleep, the standout single, Real Love, exists as a semi-lucid meditation that lets down every conceivable defence. Standing naked, without the façade of heavy-handed production, through the candour of lo-fi saturated tape deck delay, SOPE wears his heart on his sleeves and gives the airwaves his shirt.

To juxtapose the raw wounds bleeding through the track, which allow you to imagine what Bon Iver would sound like if he took a few production tips from Elliott Smith, there’s an artful stringed folk crescendo, allowing the emotion to arrive without the posturing of grandeur. The result is an ache-soaked artefact of vulnerability, pinned to a spectrally grounded soundscape

The UK-based indie-folk project formed around a sound that drifts between organic warmth and electronic subtlety. Written and recorded in Manchester, SOPE’s debut EP Frame 1 captures the cinematic nature of memory; Real Love forms its most emotionally stark frame. Lyrically rooted in love, rebirth, and the quiet persistence of hope, it’s a song that leaves the listener more open than before. Fans of Sufjan Stevens, Nick Mulvey, or Mk.gee will recognise that same tender balance between introspection and expanse.

Follow SOPE on Instagram to stay up to date with news of his release.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Moira Chicilo Mourned Hollowed-Out Towns with Sepia-Soaked 70s Americana Folk in ‘Reviver’

Posted on 26 October 2025

Wherever you are in the world, you’ve likely felt the desolation in small towns, where the doors that still open resemble vestigial remnants of another era. That slow unravelling underpins Moira Chicilo’s folk single, Reviver, a track that finds poetry in decline and intimacy in loss.

The 70s-soaked Americana vignette carries itself with winding pedal steel strings, spectral in tone, weaving through sepia-tinged panoramas of shuttered streets. Chicilo mourns what was once shared while existentially gazing at what these places will become when tumbleweed is the last restless entity moving down the main road. Reviver is not only a lament, it is also a preservation, keeping a fragment of these places alive in song, as our Anthropocene permits community and connection to crumble into anonymity.

Through stark imagery, from rusting cars to abandoned shopping carts, Chicilo distils the hollowing-out of small towns into a folk sermon of remembrance. Growing up in a farming community in Saskatchewan has granted her the gift of seeing these places not as background scenery but as cultural lifelines now under threat. That intimacy comes across as though she’s letting you ride in the passenger seat, watching the decay through her eyes as the song unfolds.

Produced and mixed by World Records, and recorded at Blue Door Recording, Reviver continues Chicilo’s instinctive pull toward music that documents as much as it heals.

Reviver is now available on all major streaming platforms. Find your preferred way to listen here.
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Review by Amelia Vandergast

Kirby Lyle unravelled sorrow with Nashville soul in Carl’s Song

Posted on 25 October 2025

Kirby Lyle set out to steal the hearts of indie folk fans with his latest single, Carl’s Song, and affectingly succeeded. His ruggedly sweet Nashville charm resounds through the roots-rich expanse of Americana soul.

With chords that wind around your rhythmic pulses with enough fervour to leave you attuned to the compassion within the panorama of a vignette trying to unravel the sorrow of the lyrical protagonist, it’s impossible not to be compelled by the breezy, kaleidoscopic melodies that will strip the weight from your wearied soul. With an intuitive understanding of the tolls we take on our own minds, Kirby Lyle is uniquely positioned as a singer-songwriter who can relate to you more than your closest friends.

Based in Nashville, Lyle has spent over thirty years shaping his sound as a multi-instrumentalist and folk artist. After making a mark on the Chicago folk scene, he has performed across the US and Europe, from Carnegie Hall to Notre Dame Cathedral.

Since embracing sobriety in 2021, he’s credited music with saving his life, and in return, he has poured that clarity and sense of purpose into his craft. Whether he’s conjuring the spirit of 60s folk or letting his classical training underscore his songwriting, Kirby Lyle creates music for those who feel deeply, fall hard, and need songs that show them how to rise again.

Carl’s Song is now available on all major streaming platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Alex Johnston Let the Sepia-Toned Twang of Country Folk Tell the Truth on Sitting Alone

Posted on 11 August 2025

There’s been a lot said about the creeping endemic of isolation, but Alex Johnston frames it with a tender frankness in Sitting Alone, the title track from his sophomore country folk LP. Through a lens tinged with sepia, the song carries the dusty warmth of the 60s and 70s, drawing from the twang of Americana and the understated melancholy that would resonate with admirers of Nick Drake, The Zombies, and Neil Young.

The arrangement is stripped of excess yet rich in texture, letting the guitar’s gentle cadence and Johnston’s easy, un-postured delivery breathe. It’s a bittersweet portrait, neither wallowing in solitude nor sugar-coating it, instead allowing moments of light to seep in through the melancholy. There’s a playfully free quality to the phrasing that makes the track feel like a quiet conversation with someone who understands, even if they can’t solve the problem at hand.

While Johnston might downplay the ripple his sound has made, there’s an undeniable charm in the unvarnished nature of his songwriting. He’s not here to put on airs, only to create an honest connection, and in Sitting Alone, that connection is both unassuming and profound.

Sitting Alone is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

The Earthy Ache of Autumn Echoed Through Joy Seroussi’s Alt-Folk Track October Winds

Posted on 17 July 2025

As we swelter under July’s molten skies, Joy Seroussi opened a backdoor into autumn with the wistful flicker of October Winds. The tender Americana-tinged alt-folk track is a love letter to leaf fall and all the messy, emotive humanity we cling to as the world cools around us. With harmonica tones that sweep through like a breeze laced with dry oak leaves and nostalgia, and with every pluck of the guitar strings acting like a heartbeat held in a quiet room, Seroussi masterfully lets the ache and comfort coexist.

For an artist who only turned his pen towards songwriting in his sixties, Seroussi composes with the instinct of someone who’s been quietly observing life’s nuances for decades. Based in Tel Aviv and Plomari, he draws from the lyrical sensitivity of Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave, while rooting his own sonic identity in the soil of self-reflection.

October Winds doesn’t lean on grandiose gestures; instead, it whispers its way into your memory. The composition breathes with intimacy, the kind that makes you want to wrap up in a wool jumper and let yourself feel whatever the breeze brings in. The melody, understated and delicate, cradles the lyrics as they chart emotional terrain that’s deeply personal but never impenetrable.

October Winds is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Ami Leigh Rewrites Mythology with Audial Intuition in the Ethereal Folk Reworking ‘Lily From the Valley’

Posted on 5 June 2025

Ami Leigh’s reworking of Lily From the Valley caresses neo-classic folk naturalism with German mythology and a sense of audial sensuality that nestles into your atoms as you follow the lightness of the progressions as they pivot and pirouette through the ethereal dream of the release. It plays with metaphysical lore while keeping the rhythms primal enough to press all the right emotive pulses.

Every time Ami Leigh comes back around, we know to expect the unexpected, we know her chameleonic charm knows no bounds, but the power of the purity within Lily From the Valley almost demands paralysis, a moment of silence to pay respect to the otherworldly beguile of the simple yet soul-jerkingly beautiful single.

The roots of the track stretch back to its original incarnation as a spoken word piece inspired by Jack Jones of Trampolene. Under the production of Neil Gibson, the focus shifted from poetic narration to sonic immersion. The final piece radiates symbolism, referencing the Virgin Goddess Ostara and the Christian tale of Eve’s sorrow blooming into a poisonous flower whose sweet scent masks a fatal sting. Leigh’s lyrical allusion to beauty-turned-venom brings a haunting duality that lingers long after the reverb decays.

From BBC North live sessions to chart-topping international radio recognition, Ami Leigh continues to prove her instinct as a producer and performer. Lily From the Valley doesn’t strive for grandeur. It simply exists with such stark beauty and integrity that it becomes impossible to ignore.

Lily From the Valley is now available to stream on all major platforms. For the full experience, visit YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

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