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Marina Florance Band

Website: http://www.marinaflorance.com

The Marina Florance Band are based in East Anglia. "Migration" is a live album recorded at the High Barn in Essex. If Marina and band were based in the US, I'm sure that this album would have been recorded at The Ryman in front of a packed audience. Nanci Griffith gets name checked in one of Marina's songs, it's a good starting reference. There's a story telling element to the songs on the album. Short cross sections on people's lives, often the songs pay homage to the human spirit, times may be hard, but with a sense of purpose and an inner belief we can make it better.

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

"Andrea's July" is a well crafted acoustic pop album that adds strings and piano to the guitar, bass and drum sound to gain a more rounded, more indepth sound. It feels like a very relaxed album, tight but laid back. Peter Belsten has a voice that evokes a lazy Sunday breakfast in the garden. The early morning sun breathing warmth into the date as you take in the morning papers. Similarly his writing style has that manana feel to it. You'll get to the end of the song, but he's not going to rush to get you there and that's fine because you're in no hurry.

Website: http://www.annscott.net

Ann Scott has always been an innovative songwriter, one thats been drawn towards the darkside, a musical equivilent of "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Alice Through The Looking Glass". There are images and feelings to be evoked that might not be places where we are comfortable to go, but which we feel the need to explore. It doesn't always work, there's times where Ann almost feels as if she's experiemented for experimentations sake, but it's the boundary pushers that make really interesting music and for the most par, "Flo" is as illuminating as it is inventive.

Website: www.myspace.com/dbgmusic

There are some albums that go beyond the words and music contained on them. More important is the meaning and concept behind them, "Free Burma" is just such an album. That the album is both well written and performed is almost a bonus. The strength of the album is that it uses music to raise the issue of Aung San Suu Kyi, an album that is as import to Burma as Nelson Mandela was to South Africa. A democratically elected head of state that was unable to take up the post her people elected her to simply because the military didn't agree. D.B.G raises the profile

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

Circus Envy are a band I discovered through the Talkawhile website and one who I was delighted to discover had an EP out. Like many with a contemporary folk rock attitude, Circus Envy beat a path to Stu Hanna's door for the behind desk work. "A New Dawn" was the result. There's a real strength to both the songs and their delivery. Folk fok has reinvented it's self by doing away with the excessive twiddly bits and focused back on the songs. The musicians know and understand their craft, there's beauty in the structure. Roll on a full blown album five tracks simply aren't enough.

Website: http://www.thejohnhenrys.com

Good honest stright forward country rock appears to be the real speciality of The John Henrys. It only starts going a little bit awry when they move into power ballad territory. Whilst it retains it's country edge it claws a little. Fortunately "White Linen" is far more a rock album than a balladeer. This Canadian based five piece combine tight harmonies with riff laden tunes and a little blues organ to deliver an album that feels like it's destined for wide open spaces and long trips on the road. As at home in southern honky-tonks as east coast bars.

The Miserable Rich

Album:Of Flight & Fury

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

Whilst the name implies this could be a class war clone, the reality is very far removed from that. "Of Flight & Fury" is rich in English eccentricty and feels like it holidays in whimsy. The instrumentation is such that you're never sure what's quite coming up next, well not until you've played it a couple of times. I know that's true of every album on the first outing, but the way The Miserable Rich make use of strings is almost jazz like at times, not such much as random, more unexpected emphasis. The whole pulls together well, exciting and innovative and as refreshing as breakfast tea.

Website: http://www.rashrecords.org.uk

Featuring fifteen artists assemble on Rash, "Home {Volume 1.} covers a wide range of artists from singer/songwriter and through to a more pop/electronica type sound. Compiled by Johnno Casson, aka Snippet this collection serves as a free download and introduction to artists striving for recognition on a wider stage. There's some real delights nestled in here and nothing that youwould call a real duffer. Personal favoutite is one of the more left field, tongue in cheek tracks, "Lady Godivas Horse" but there's a healthy mix of the frothy and frivilous with the more serious.

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

I'm not normally one to be negative about an album, but "Aquatint" by Testbild! doesn't quite do it for me, which is unusual becuase it's on Folkwit who have a good reputation for innovative folk orientated albums. It might simply be that this album has distilled that sense of innovation down too far and not left enough to balance out that excess. That said albums like this do need to be encouraged. Without artists prepared to push the envelope we're going to hear an awful lot of the same thing. It's not that Testbild! don't know their way around the instruments, it's the combinations that don't work

Album:Plays Blues, Ballads & Favorites

Website: http://www.jimmievaughan.com/

Good honest relaxed blues that consist of self penned tunes and country blues covers of the likes of Charlie Rich and Willie Nelson. Jimmie Vaughan is best known as a sidesman, but does himself proud working under his own name. Whilst Jimmie gets to do guitars and vocals, he shares a lot of the vocal duties with Lou Ann Barton, both in duets and as a highly featured backing vocalist. It gives him licence to extend the range and topic of the songs he performs on "Plays Bues, Ballads & Favourites". It also gives him a freer range with pace, injecting slow and sultry into the mix.

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

It's fair to say that bands with a pop/funk element to their sound are few and far between in the releaes section of Fatea Magazine, but we have made exceptions in the past and will do again in the future. A couple of readers suggested that we should give this a go and we relented. It's not totally our cup of tea, but it does blend in a ska type sound that gives the pop sensibilities a bit of bite, a bit of pizazz. It's difficult to judge a band on two tracks, but Blighters do have a sound that reaches back as much as it reaches forward and by doing so calls on a heritage that's easy to relate to.

Gerry Jablonski And The Electric Band

Album:Gerry Jablonski And The Electric Band

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

There's a bit of a clue in the title, "Gerry Jablonski And The Electric Band" this is not subtle delta blues, rather a full blown assault on the senses. Bucket loads of guitar, occasional swirling organs, more harmonica than you can shake a stick at. There's a very raucous feel to the whole, at times the album seems to feed of it's own energy, consuming the songs in a riffladen bout of execess. It's so much more than pub blues, but if it was only pub blues, that would be enough, because it captures an atmosphere that gives the album a real sense of vitility.