MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Album reviews with Ian Sinclair: January 13, 2025
New releases from Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart; The Weather Station; and Sam Amidon
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart
Looking For The Thread
(Thirty Tigers)
★★★
CONCEIVED and written in Scotland and recorded at Real World Studios near Bath, Looking For The Thread is an enchanting album from three top musicians — US singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter and Scottish folk artists Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart.
A Heart That Never Closes is classic Carpenter, a mid-tempo tune full of affecting, philosophical lines. Elsewhere, Polwart contributes Rebecca, a tribute to a 100-year-old beech tree in West Lothian, and Hold Everything, inspired by John Berger’s 2008 book Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches On Survival and Resistance.
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