KLOF Mag Regular

Ye Vagabonds, Catrin Finch, Matt Kivel, Barry Walker Jr., Hen Ogledd, Joshua Burnside, Lemoncello, The Notwist, Sailing Stones, Bonnie "Prince" Billy and lots more.

Feb 13, 2026

This has been a really busy week for new music; even today, the new single from Joshua Burnside just knocked me sideways - lyrically it was so viscerally specific and devastating (more on that in a moment); but below are a few notable highlights. I’m going to drop a new Mixtape over the weekend, so keep an eye out for that, and, if you’re a paid subscriber, the upcoming Monday Morning Brew Playlist will definitely fill any gaps, as there are plenty of new releases included.

Reviews

Ye Vagabonds – All Tied Together

Out Now on River Lea - Order via: https://yevagabonds.ffm.to/alltiedtogether

By Thomas Blake

Ye Vagabonds’ origin story has more than a hint of rags-to-riches about it, except the riches are of the artistic rather than the monetary kind. The Mac Gloinn brothers began performing together just as what would come to be called – somewhat euphemistically – the post-2008 Irish economic downturn began to take a stranglehold on Ireland’s banks and businesses. The arts sector, and music in particular, took a battering, as it so often does when national purse-strings are tightened. Austerity has the habit of shifting creative paradigms: scenes are pushed underground as funding dries up; music and art become more political, more belligerently anti-establishment. The old cycles persist: necessity begets invention, jewels are dredged up from the mud.

Now zoom in on the medium-sized town of Carlow. 2008. A pair of brothers are performing tunes in the street. Perhaps they earn some small change – likely a fraction of what their music deserves, but enough to help them galvanise a community, and enough to host some of the most electrifying music nights their town has ever witnessed. Those muddy jewels don’t come fully-formed, they have to be worked at, and dozens of artists will fall by the wayside having never produced the finished article. But Ye Vagabonds put in the hard yards. Their talent doesn’t go unnoticed. A move to Dublin, with its emergent experimental folk scene, allows them to further develop their punchy, earthy take on traditional music, full of wild harmonies and haunted by the ghosts of Ireland’s rural communities.

Fast forward to 2023, and Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn are collaborating with American indie-rock supergroup Boygenius on a new version of The Parting Glass for a charity single in tribute to Sinéad O’Connor. They have an EP and three critically acclaimed albums under their belt. There’s the sense that the band are at a kind of crossroads. They’ve reached the stage where a new album is an eagerly-awaited thing, and there is always the possibility that it could bring with it some kind of sea change, some new direction, or perhaps a retreat to their roots.

That fourth album – All Tied Together – has finally arrived, and strangely, it is both a progression and a consolidation. It is both bigger and somehow closer than its predecessors. The sense of progression stems from two factors: the songs, for the first time, are all their own, and the music is performed by a large and varied array of collaborators. But in striking contrast to the comparatively big sound, the album’s themes are more personal than ever. In focusing on their own songwriting rather than traditional material, the Mac Gloinns created a collection of songs with real emotional heft. All Tied Together is an album about home and companionship. Two of its songs – Danny and I’ll Keep Singing – are about departed friends. Danny tells the story of a local lad failed by society, but rather than being maudlin or overly sentimental, there is a celebratory feel to it. The strings, when they hit, strike the perfect balance between soaring and sad. I’ll Keep Singing pays tribute to a former mentor. As well as the customary plucks and strums, there are instruments less often seen in the folk tradition: a minimal piano, a shimmer of synth, the constant itch of feedback.

Similarly, Mayfly is a character study of a friend who disappeared from the eyes of society. A stormy synth interrupts the song two-thirds of the way through, making the clarity of the final verse even more piercing. It’s those kind of moments that mark the album out as something of a departure: they are employed subtly, never overbearingly, and are a sign of the brothers’ continued progress as songwriters and as artists who can imagine and create a sonic landscape. Some credit must also go to Phil Weinrobe. The producer has worked with indie darlings Big Thief, and he helps bring a kind of restrained energy to these songs, as well as a sense of space. The Eno-inspired love song Gravity is defined by its expanses: a layered collage of synths and bowed bass. It is minimal, almost ambient, until the vocals take hold, and we are wrapped up in their slow, sweet, slightly discomforting progress. Weinrobe travelled from Brooklyn with multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, who contributes to a collaborative effort that includes ten musicians.

Beneath the embellishments, Ye Vagabonds do the simple things very well. The synth floats near the surfaces of opener Sitric Road, but the song’s bones are clearly visible: a limber acoustic guitar and a vocal performance full of nostalgia (and a turn of phrase that would make Christy Moore proud). Along with the following song, The Flood – a jumpy, fiddle-driven romp – it tells a kind of creation myth, a look back at times spent in Dublin squats during the band’s formative years. This opening one-two is both deeply nostalgic and rich with autobiographical detail. So too are the breezy Cuckoo Storm, the tale of a friend from squat days, and the tender Where the Heart Lies. It seems to be a gift among certain Irish songwriters to be able to write about the nostalgia of personal experience in a way that is often highly moving without ever succumbing to the pitfalls of cliche or mawkishness. It’s a gift the Mac Gloinns have in abundance.

Four Walls tackles a similar subject to Where the Heart Lies: the move from an itinerant lifestyle towards domesticity. Here, Brían writes of a string of evictions he and his partner endured, but he does so without a hint of bitterness, only hope for the future. Young Again is a plainspoken love song written by Diarmuid for his wife, all about the pleasures of living together in the moment – again, it’s moving without being mushy. On the springy, lightfooted Long Grass, he takes inspiration from the visionary Sufi mystic, Rumi. The song extolls the virtue of acceptance; its sentiment is simple but wise, and never comes across as overly didactic. And closing track We Always Forget About the Rain – with its beautiful harmonies, Kate Ellis’ melancholy cello, the delicate fingerpicking – brings together many of the album’s most enthralling elements. It rounds things off on a lyrically ambiguous, open-ended note.

Given how far Ye Vagabonds have come since the early days, it wouldn’t be too controversial to see All Tied Together as the work of a band looking back on their past with fondness and taking stock of their current situation. But if the content of these songs tells you one thing, it’s that the Mac Gloinn brothers are still living life on the move, putting everything into their music. The concepts of past and future are insignificant: it’s experience that counts, and Ye Vagabonds have learnt to turn their experiences into vital, absorbing art.

Catrin Finch – Notes To Self

Out on February 27th, 2026, via bendigedig label - Physical Pre-Orders here

by Glenn Kimpton

Celebrated Welsh harpist Catrin Finch’s first solo album in a decade is also her most heartfelt and personal. Notes To Self is a set of eleven compositions for harp dedicated to ‘Katy’, her 13-year-old self (the album notes for each song are a letter to ‘Katy’, adding depth and context to the music). Catrin uses the power of music and her seemingly endless prowess with the instrument that has accompanied her since she was five to celebrate a forty-year journey through music, a love of place, and a love of life.

The album begins with 13, a magical number for Catrin and the age of the past self she is addressing. Built from softly chiming notes, the music slowly blossoms into a pretty, delicately plucked melody with backing chords. There is an immediate sense of innocence about this opening tune that develops into a feeling of adventure and progress as the piece evolves into a more intricate arrangement, with dancing melodies and complex motifs.

More cautious in its approach but no less appealing is Adre, a love letter to home (Catrin grew up in Llanon, Cardigan Bay in West Wales) containing beautiful, luminous harp runs played at an easy tempo, with arpeggiating notes conjuring images of rolling waves and slowly moving marine life. The ultra-minimal percussion tapping in the background also helps keep the piece’s mood organic and maintain a sense of fundamental simplicity.

Contrasting this is Black Holes, a far stranger and more serious song – inspired by those scary childhood dreams about existence (Catrin writes: “You know the dream? The one when you’re falling into big black holes, and you can’t stop or get out, and the intense pressure of the dark space becomes so much, that eventually you wake up, feeling lost and alone?”)- beginning with eerie knocks and swirls, sounding like an argument behind a closed door in places. The mood lifts slightly with slowly played harp chords, but the underlying scrapes and a more urgent, distant part maintain unease. As the music continues, a sense of weightlessness pervades, accentuated by lower notes and a sparse, spiky piece of playing. The contrasting nature of the music here is reflected in the song’s notes, where Catrin writes to a thirteen-year-old ‘Katy’ about ‘stress and deep worry’, but notes that ‘most holes can be climbed out of’. Altogether, it feels like a big song, a journey into a not altogether unwelcome unknown.

Another standout is Clear Sky, an anomaly here in that it is performed on acoustic harp, giving the music a far more classical feel. The quicker decay of the notes gives the music a different character to some of the electric harp tracks, and a deliberately played, strong melody with a slow arpeggio backing maintains space and brings clarity to a lovely piece of music.

Occupying the anxiety and deep worry of Black Holes is Together Again, a song addressing change and anxiety around feelings; Catrin writes: “I know by now you’ve started to feel those feelings, and you aren’t sure what to make of them. You’re questioning whether they’re real or wrong. I’m here to tell you that they are indeed real, so very real, and they are the opposite of wrong. They make you and I who we are in so many facets of our life.” This unease is present throughout the music, but particularly at the beginning, where isolated notes jostle before a gentle melody takes hold. At the core is this reassuring solidity through the melody (Catrin, addressing the young ‘Katy’ in the song’s notes and talking of ‘those so very real feelings’ echoes this comforting presence), but low notes work with sharply played high strings at an increasing lick, suggesting some lingering disquiet. It is a gorgeous piece, full of depth, emotion and musical intelligence.

Shifting the mood again is Môr Arianrhod, a stunning, free-flowing piece of woven harp runs, with inquisitive lower notes that add a light, dreamlike character. With a less strong underlying melody than a lot of the music here, this one has the feel of an air, a less structured piece that swirls and develops textures as it moves. Images of flowing rivers and leaves blowing in the wind abound during a delightful piece that is my pick of the bunch.

It is well known that Catrin Finch is a gifted musician with an acute ear for melody, and Notes to Self is another example of how much variety and depth she can find within the realms of the harp. This album, just shy of an hour in length, flies by and is expertly put together, with ebbs and flows, light and shade and a range of emotions running through the strings. Adding the heartfelt letters accompanying each song in the notes to this just gives the music more emotional heft and completes the project. A beautiful work by one of the best in the business, Notes to Self is one to cherish.

Matt Kivel – Escape from L.A.

Out now on Scissor Tail Records. Bandcamp

by Danny Neill

On his eighth solo album, Escape from L.A., Matt Kivel presents a set of songs that, when experienced as a whole, form a widescreen picture and a reflection on a single deep subject. This is Kivel’s most autobiographical offering, but it is delivered with an impressionist’s hand. His connection to L.A. runs deep, having grown up in Santa Monica, shuttled along the 10, 101, and PCH. After first breaking out with the Eagle Rock indie band Princeton, who toured hard but inevitably burned out, he would re-emerge with stark, haunting solo records that won wide critical praise. This one, though, is a grander, deeper beast. The man himself has jokingly called it “bootleg as hell Blood On The Tracks’ but whereas Dylan would spend just a few sessions refining and then re-recording sections of his heart as an open book masterpiece, Kivel has been chipping away at ‘Escape From L.A.’ for the past nine years. It conjures images of an ambitious work slowly growing on its canvas at the corner of the studio, a piece too close to the surface for the artist to approach often. Undoubtedly, the desire to get it exactly right necessitated some careful attention to the creative process, and indeed, the element in which that Dylan comparison rings truest is the way the lyrical perspectives play with time. This is an album that lives in the present moment and drifts back for first-person perspectives on past events, reflecting on them with the benefit of hindsight.

Musically, the record opens in a gently introspective place. The track Santa Monica scattergun fires out memories of romantic moments (listening with a close companion to TLC on a beach, for example) and recollections of school days happenings, such as the cops shooting someone’s brother dead. This is played out to the sound of a light, shuffling beat, ghostly backing vocals, and a warm, Hawaiian-sounding guitar breezing by. Where initially we could be in a remote hideaway from urban life, the production on Tidal Wave feels like it has parachuted us straight onto the hot concrete of the city streets. There is an imposing, synthesised throb to the sound and an ominous echo in the atmosphere. A Little Mark cranks up the electric guitars and spins the senses into an environment that can only sharpen your edges. As far as the subject matter Kivel addresses, this is an individual’s memories that often intersperse with references that anyone with recent cultural and topical awareness will be familiar with. The L.A. riots and fall of the twin towers get a mention, but on more of a tangent, the song Robert Redford tells the story of Matt’s father being cast in the 1988 film ‘The Natural’ alongside the famous actor. Later, Vampire Weekend is indeed referencing the art rock combo, but from the angle of their sudden critical and commercial success occurring in tandem with the reverse fortunes of Matt’s first band around the same time. “We could have been Vampire Weekend. Ever get the sense you’re not wanted in some place you want to be?”

Happily, the time spent reworking, re-recording, and re-arranging these songs has resulted in an album that is extremely well crafted with many subtle layers waiting to be found. The notion of a cohesive song suite is reinforced with the closing number, Barbara’s Ocean. We hear a couple of minutes in conventional, lyrical song form that has an appropriate air of finality, but the piece then closes with a coda that runs to almost three minutes of resonant electronic sound. This could be either the rolling, waving presence of the ocean or the vibrating pulse of nearby urban life, but whatever the meaning, it evokes an overwhelming sense of indelible life and movement. There is a breathing presence that is never silent, always regenerating and moving ever onwards. It changes before your eyes as the touchstones and memories of a lifetime are washed into the city fabric, then either eroded or evolved. Matt Kivel has cleverly sketched some reflections of his own experiences into a far bigger narrative and successfully grasped the immersive enormity of the landscape around him. In carving a piece with such personal truth, he has made an album that should speak to a far wider world than from which it came.

Barry Walker Jr. – Paleo Sol

Out on January 3oth, 2026, via Thrill Jockey: Thrill Jockey | Bandcamp

by Glenn Kimpton

Pedal steel player Barry Walker Jr. is well known for his collaborative work with fellow Thrill Jockeys Marisa Anderson and Rose City Band, plus Mouth Painter and North Americans, but for Paleo Sol, a quite joyous release, he has teamed up with Animal Surrender! drummer Rob Smith and Mouth Painter bassist Jason Willmon to create an airy soundscape of shimmering patterns and melodic lines, punctuated by light fingerpicked guitar, considered percussion and wonderfully rich bass.

Although there are melodies to be found here, the focus is more on space and textures, with inquisitive playing seeking out the contours of the patterns laid down, while retaining a loosely structured framework. The result is music that is meditative and calming in places, but quite buoyant in others. Leaving Lower Big Basin is an example of the latter, with a firmer drum beat working with forthright pedal steel and deep bass to bring excitement to the trip.

Elsewhere, Under Leaf Hill is a slower, more pensive piece, with a distant, loose drum part seemingly isolated from an upfront, spare bassline that propels a sense of melancholy surrounding the music. A short tune at under three minutes, this one feels like a serious short story with hidden depths.

Just as gorgeous but less concerned is Perdiot, Call Me, another tune showcasing the power of a discerning bass and drum duo, this time with a bit more flexing and supporting a broader, more muscular pedal steel part. It’s also worth noting here the quality of production (by the band) and mastering by Amy Dragon at Telegraph, which is impeccable throughout, with the balance on each track adjusted ever so slightly depending on the mood of the piece.

Which brings us to the key song Sentient Lithosphere, a plus twelve-minute number built on space, a softly klaxon-like pedal steel loop, and super-delicately handled percussion. There is an improvised, experimental quality to both bass and drums on this one, and the restraint of all three players is fantastic, with the drama building infinitesimally as the generous run time advances. I could have listened to it all day.

Thrill Jockey has established a strong track record with collaborative projects—Black Duck and more eaze & claire rousay both spring to mind—and Paleo Sol deserves mention alongside them. Walker, Smith and Willmon have created an album that works equally well as background meditation or as the subject of closer scrutiny. Its confidence radiates quietly, never demanding attention but rewarding those who give it. This is music that understands the power of understatement, the beauty that can be found in restraint, and the expressive potential use of space.

Confident, inviting, and impeccably produced, this is collaborative instrumental music at its finest.

Hen Ogledd – DISCOMBOBULATED

Out on February 20th, 2026, Domino: DomMart | Digital

by Thomas Blake

Experimental music has a distinct advantage over more fixed genres: its fluidity and openness allow it to be simultaneously serious and fun. Some bands, composers, performers and even fans didn’t get this memo, but Hen Ogledd truly understand the assignment. Discombobulated is their third album as a quartet, and it is as fresh, weird, pranksterish, passionate and downright uncategorisable as we have come to expect. The combination of Sally Pilkington, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson and Dawn Bothwell – each of them an accomplished songwriter and composer – remains as potent as ever, and their blend of freaky electronic folk-rock, politically charged psych-pop and modernist compositional techniques is still elusive, bewildering and brilliant.

A glance at Discombobulated’s list of contributors might suggest a confusing maximalist soup: Finnish metal singers rub shoulders with revered sound recordists, while big-name American experimental jazz sits alongside the children of band members. When you mix all the colours together indiscriminately, you will often end up with a brown sludge, but Hen Ogledd miraculously avoid this fate. In fact, they manage to go the other way: this is music that seems to invent new colours, brighter or more nuanced than the ones we know. That is because Hen Ogledd understand the constraints and freedoms of space and time. They allow each element its breathing room. The scene is set by spoken opener Nell’s Prologue, a child’s-eye dispatch from a bucolic if slightly eerie woodland. This kind of teaser gives us a small, incomplete clue to the album’s structural elements: clearly, there is a narrative, but its exact nature remains mysterious.

Some clarity emerges on Scales Will Fall, an eight-minute slab of post-rapture sci-prog poetry that ranges from Presbyterian reform to the women of Greenham Common, and on to a kind of apocalyptic youth revolt. Bothwell takes on the role of ringmaster – or perhaps cult leader – urging the kids to ‘rise up’ and ‘tear[…] down the corporate wall.’ It is a song of two halves, the fanfare of the first part giving way to a jazzy freak-out before the rallying cry of the chorus kicks back in. Thematically, it cements a preoccupation with building a better future and emphasises the primacy of youth. Musically, it is a stirring, ragged anthem.

Dead in a Post-Truth World, sung in Welsh and English, bemoans the evils of our politicians – ‘gammon on the telly’ – to a musical backdrop of electro future-funk and clattering percussion which at times threatens to put the ‘disco’ in ‘discombobulated.’ (The unexpected theme of disco raises its head again in the lyrics of the otherwise tender Clara, which is strange and decentred even by Hen Ogledd’s standards.) Their post-truth world is instantly recognisable as the present day; lyrics take well-aimed potshots at shit-brained patriots (‘The mythical country/you claim allegiance of is gone./It was never here’) and – more importantly – the people in power who feed them lies. If we didn’t know it before, we do now: Hen Ogledd are concerned about the political state of the world, the ethical corners humanity has backed itself into. They are planning to fight their way out of those corners. While their music often has a progressive edge, their political standpoint is more closely aligned with a militant-leftist strand of punk: admirably anti-bigotry, anti-corporate, anti-corruption.

This is an album that sees art as a possible way out of a morass, a route to the future. As it has already become clear, that future is the ambiguous birthright of generations just-born and as yet unborn. So the prevalence of children’s voices on many of these songs makes sense: it is a political choice as well as an artistic one. The same can be said for the other collaborators. These include Chris Watson, whose field recordings have always foregrounded the importance of the natural world, and Matana Roberts, the experimental saxophonist and vocalist whose work frequently touches on themes of slavery and the institutionalised racism in America, past and present.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Discombobulated is how melodic, how propulsive, how downright dancey it manages to be. Exhibit A: End of the Rhythm, a paean to physical movement and the emancipatory power of the collective, which hurtles along in a pulsating rush that only adds to the urgency of Bothwell’s words. Even the minute-long a capella Amser a Ddengys, with its repetitive joining together of voices, manages to invoke a physical rush.

The pace shifts down for Clear Pools, which, at nearly twenty minutes long, is something of a magnum opus. Beginning with a crashing drum solo, it moves through periods of lyrical and musical reflection, vivid depictions of recovery from trauma and anxiety. It is here that the band most fully – and most simply – synthesise their personal and political predilections. Bright guitars, cascades of keys, calm and melodic voices, and lyrics that emphasise stillness and clarity repeat and redouble. The song is a hypnotic swirl, a dream to get lost in, or to find yourself in. The influence of new age music is apparent, and the whole piece feels like a kind of humanist spiritual. It is inclusive and transcendent. At one point, a spoken-word section in Finnish (from Janne Westerlund of metal band Circle) inserts itself into the flow, dovetailing perfectly and never feeling like an interruption. It really is a beautiful piece.

So too is album closer Land of the Dead, albeit in a more disconcerting and ambivalent way. Ghostly piano and slow, nocturnal, jazzy rhythms back up Davies’ Welsh intonations. It makes for a deliciously uncanny, somewhat mysterious end to an album that, for the most part, wears its heart on its sleeve. Hen Ogledd are always entertaining and intellectually engaging, and on Discombobulated, they have given us their most consistent, relevant and boundary-pushing record yet.

News

Click on the title to read our article in full:

Joshua Burnside Shares Devastating New Single “The Last Armchair”

Joshua Burnside has shared The Last Armchair, a new single from his forthcoming album, It’s Not Going to Be Okay (March 20th on Nettwerk). The Belfast-based songwriter delivers a quietly devastating meditation on grief, loss, and the illusion of adulthood, built around a single piece of IKEA furniture that carries unbearable weight.

The Last Armchair opens with a brutal intimacy: “Oh, The last armchair you ever sat on / Before you overdosed / Is the one I sit in every morning / To eat my egg and toast.” It’s the same chair Burnside once carried across an IKEA car park, feeling grown up for the first time after making his first furniture purchase. Now it’s a relic of loss, a daily reminder of someone gone. The contrast between that initial pride and present devastation anchors the entire song.

Lemoncello Return with Spellbinding New Single “Meet Me Halfway”

Lemoncello release Meet Me Halfway today via Claddagh Records, their first new music since last year’s self-titled debut album. The Irish indie-folk duo of Laura Quirke (guitar/vocals) and Claire Kinsella (cello/vocals) return with a six-minute meditation on connection and distance that feels both intimate and expansive.

The Notwist Share Blade Runner-Inspired “Projectors” From New Album

The Notwist have unveiled “Projectors,” the latest single from their forthcoming album News from Planet Zombie, arriving March 13th via Morr Music—and it’s shaping up to be one of the year’s essential releases. The track showcases the German trio at their most texturally inventive, offsetting burbling electronic sound design against country-tinged songwriting that feels both organic and uncanny.

Sailing Stones Premieres “A Promise To Love” from new album “Slow Magic”

Irish-born, Bristol-based artist Jenny Lindfors, who records as Sailing Stones, is premiering the video for new single A Promise To Love below, ahead of its release tomorrow, February 11th. The track is the first single from her forthcoming sophomore album Slow Magic, out July 3rd (Self-Released).

Bonnie “Prince” Billy Shares “Hey Little”

Bonnie “Prince” Billy has shared “Hey Little,” the second single from his forthcoming album We Are Together Again, out March 6th via Domino Records. The track features Catherine Irwin on vocals and string arrangements inspired by Madonna’s “Dear Jessie.” The video, shot on film and incorporating double-exposure techniques, was filmed in a Louisville indoor pool and draws inspiration from the classic Burt Lancaster film The Swimmer.

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