State Broadcasters and Angharad Drake on The Moon

The Moon presents another double whammy of releases brought to you by the wonder of Bandcamp. Both artists were recently brought to my attention by the excellent FRUK blog.

First up is a newish new album from State Broadcasters who hail form Glasgow in The Land of Enlightenment to the north of The North. It is their third LP, and I presume they are no spring chickens as tracks on this LP reminisce about gatefold vinyl on a bedroom floor in 1984, "when society was dead, at least that's what she said", and going to indie nights in 1990 "with the girls from the Catholic School".

On this LP at least, their sound is not that folky, but it is a great combination of some other folk tinged Glasgow bands - Belle and Sebastian, The Delgados and Admiral Fallow. And it deserves to be acclaimed far beyond the the realms of the folk scene.

Don't be put off by the worthy but a bit M.O.R opener, as track two should be the festival song of the year and it continues to be consistently great and varied. Their previous albums along with singles and EPs are on their Bandcamp page and all three of the albums can be streamed from the usual places.



Angharad Drake - Ghost



Next up is Angharad Drake with her first proper LP, but she has released three other mini LPs since 2013 - all of which are available on her Bandcamp page. Only the new LP and most recent mini LP, along with a couple of tracks from compilations, are available to stream in the usual places, but together they make up two LPs worth of top tunes.

There are countless folky female singers with beautiful voices around at the moment but Ms Drake stands out for me, this may be in part because she is from Australia which does make her wonderful voice stand out from the crowd and gives her sound a bit of an edge, but also because she writes great songs.

Her previous releases were mainly just her with acoustic guitar, but on this album she has gone a bit electric, though not quite as much as I suspected from hearing  Baby - the excellent lead single and opening track, as the album then becomes mainly acoustic until Honey in the Rock comes along and explodes with some wonderful electric guitar noise. I hope she varies her sound more in a similar vein in the future, but also keeps writing brilliant acoustic folk songs.

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