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Website: http://www.fatea-showcase-sessions.co.uk

This one of ours so we're not going to review as such, just let you know it's available. "One" is the latest release in the free Fatea Showcase Sessions series of downloads. Featuring seventeen great solo artists from a range of acoustic based genres, "One" is there to give you a chance to hear from a range of highly talented artists. The download is recorded at 256kbs to give the quality the songs deserve. The download comes complete with sleeve back and can be burnt as a full length cd. A biog of all the artists and details of where you can find out more about their recordings and hopefully buy.

Album:Calcutta Grove

Website: http://www.myspace.com/seantaylorsongs

We've raved about Sean Taylor before, he recorded our album of the year for 2007. "Calcutta Grove" is his third full length album and one that sees him taking his music down a slightly blusier root. It's also an album that shows what he can do on a piano in addition to his talented guitar playing. "Calcutta Gove" is more instant than his previous cuts. His constant gigging seems to have given him a better feel for assembling a group of songs into a set. This feels, well right. It's a fantastic album of songs and tunes. The man's got talent hopefully this album will get it to a wider audience

Website: http://www.beogamusic.com

We first picked up on Beoga at Cambridge last year, as did a lot of people. Their combination of celtic, jazz and nightclub tunes seemed to be sprinkled with pixie dust and a cheeky grin. It's a spirit they've captured on "The Incident". Whether they're playing a tune or singing a song there's a spring in their step and a swing in their soul. There's a bright finish on the album, one that reflects, rather than being over polished. There's some great percussion beating away at the heart supported by some outstanding accordion. It's a big sound that reflects the personality of Beoga.

Website: http://www.myspace.com/stewsimpsonmusic

Renaissance man Stew Simpson shows that there is more to singer/songwriter/actors from the North East than Sting and Jimmy Nail. "All The Best" is a carefully thought out ep that keeps a link between artist and the community he comes from. Half of the songs on the album are inspired by events and incidents in the north. These are combined with a song of wider view, based on the point of view of a four year old living in Iraq, "This Oil Is For You". It gives a sensitive focus rather than the rage and by doing so strikes deep. Simpson is a real wordsmith.

Album:Beside The Waves Of Time

Label:Crescent Moon Records

Website: http://www.ionaleigh.com

By using most of Findlay Napier & The Bar Room Mountaineers as the core of the musicians behind her, Iona Leigh ensured that her songs would have the perfect counterpoint to her distinctive vocal. Strong on melody with an edgy gaelic rock feel, even though the vocal is in English. "Beside The Waves Of TIme" draws extensively on Celtic imagery, legend and spirit for inspiration. There's a wildness both from legend, Selkie and Sidhe and nature, water, trees and birds that blend with human psyche to create songs that appeal to the elemental core within. Enchantingly delivered.

Website: http://www.myspace.com/johncarnie

"Far From Home" has a great concept behind it. Take some Scottish and Irish traditional music and transplant a guitar into the parts normally played by fiddles, pipes and harps. It brings a whole new dynamic to some fairly well known tunes that I'm sure the purists will yell HERETIC at, but also one that breathes a different life into the tunes. Some of the songs are more traditional than others, some John Carnie also had a hand in writing. Carnie's style has an element of the picker around it, giving the notes more attack less slide and I found myself thinking of a Scots Freddie Phillips.

The Bittersweets

Album:Goodnight, San Francisco

Website: http://www.myspace.com/thebittersweets

"Goodnight, San Fancisco" inhabits the ground between country and Americana, it's a busy space at the moment, but not all bands in that area have got a vocalist like Hannah Prater. Prater has one of those voices that standout, partly because of the emotion she can capture in her vocal chords and partly because she measures her delivery so well. The Bittersweets are also one of te closest things the genre has to a power trio. They've pretty much got the guitar/keyboard combination off pat and a sympathetic percussive element gives the whole real balance.

Scouting For Girls

Single:Keep On Walking

Website: http://www.myspace.com/scoutingforgirls

Roy Stride is a man that really knows how to put a song together. Yes it's light and frothy stuff delivered in an acoustic rock/pop style, but lets not let that distract from how well penned they are. "Keep On Walking" could be delivered in so many different ways. Whilst it sounds spot on in it's current formet, you know that it would equally as well as a folk song or country etc. Scouting For Girls have pop rock sensibilities and a mass appeal, something they've achieved on the strength of their material as opposed to image and hype. You feel they're here for the long haul.

Album:The Company You Keep

Website: http://www.myspace.com/abonbanjo

Alison Brown is an artist that seems to work well in short doses. As part of a compilation or a radioshow her songs and tunes offer something slightly differnt to those around them. Grouped together as part of an album the short fallings in her style of bluegrass, it's a little too formal, almost corporate. It's like she's found a style and doesn't have the confidence to wander too far from it. Consequently "The Company You Keep" doesn't work as an album. Put together any combination of three songs and you're bored by the third one. Played individually, there's not one I'd switch off.

EP:Robert Johnson Has Left Mississippi

Website: http://www.myspace.com/kristadetor

Krista Detor is probably better known on the other side of the pond than over here, but hopefully that's about to change. She's got some dates over here this year and will also be on Radio 4 as part of a piece on the Darwin Song Project. Detor writes strong passion and melody lead material with a real depth. It's amazing what she can squeeze into her songs, people, places, thoughts and emotions. Her forte(sic) comes though her use of piano at the centre of the arrangement. "Robert Johnson Has Left Mississippi" takes songs from three of her albums showcases her writing.

Website: www.blackheartmusic.co.uk

When you've got song titles like "Glasgow Tuesday 6pm" you know that you're dealing with artists that know how important the day to day is in life. "Invisible" is in many ways a more delicate, more fragile album than Blackheart's previous cut, "Indigo". It feels more exposed, more personal and it might be that opening up that gives the album a richer feel. It's not fragile, it's exposed the stone and bricks that hold it all up, strong arches and pillars that the spirit uses to support the body. "Invisible" are the bits you can't see, that are there in front of you, beneath the surface.

Inneke 23 And The Lipstick Painters

Website: http://www.inneke23.be

I never imagined The Strangler's "No More Heroes" as a "Ghost Riders In The Sky" type, dark country song. Fortunately Inneke 23 did and did a great job of reinterpreting the song. It sits well in an album that seems to blend poetry with torch country. "Charcoal" is packed full of songs with lyrical gems. This is the sort of album that can rip still your still beating heart straight out of your chest. You care about the characters in her songs because she makes you believe they are, that they are impacted by the song as much as we are. Broody, forboading.