Bolachas Now Playing is our Spotify new music playlist, updated every Wednesday, with two hours of brand new tracks. You can follow it here. There are also YouTube Music and Tidal versions, too. Explore this category to see all the 400+ weekly playlists we have created since 2015.
If it wasn’t for the accent, you would think Jade Bird was another southwestern American half-country, half-Stevie Nicks songwriter. You know, the kind we love around here. It’s easy to know where the confusion might come from: in her second album, the English musician is joined by producer Dave Cobb (who else?) to bring us one of the most interesting Americana records of the year so far.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I wrote “Produced by Dan Auerbach” here when describing an album. Yola‘s “Stand For Myself” is another of those. Her debut record, “Walk Through Fire”, was gaining serious traction when the pandemic hit, robbing her of well deserved high profile shows and festival slots – but not for long. Fresh off a Newport Folk Festival slot, this might be the possible songwriter’s dream summer.
Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay’s second album as LUMP is our recommendation of the week. It can be easy to dismiss these songs as scraps from whatever doesn’t find their way into Marling’s “main” albums. But those ideas, coupled with Lindsay’s marvellous synth work, come to have a life of their own here, and “Animal” has some of the best tracks we’ve heard from both musicians in a while.
Mega Bog’s new record is our album of the week. If you know her work – we were all over her previous album, “Dolphine”, back in 2019 – you know exactly what to expect; if not, well, if you’re into exquisite songwriting (think Cate Le Bon or Helena Deland), this might just be your jam.
This week we feature the Canadian singer-songwriter Dana Sipos. Her new album, “The Astral Plane”, was produced by Sandro Perri, and it’s one of our favourite folk records of 2021 so far.