Best Folk Albums of 2024: Jim Gilchrist picks his highlights

Shetland pianist Amy Laurenson | Alan Peebles

Amy Laurenson: Strands (Own Label) Debut albums don’t come much more impressive than this exhilarating recording from Shetland pianist Amy Laurenson, 2023’s BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year. Technically accomplished, inventive and with a palpable delight in her mainly native island repertoire, she is crisply accompanied by guitarist Miguel Girão, double-bassist Rhona MacDonald and Lea Sondergaard Larsen on bodhran. The joyously vivacious opening set of Shetland reels sets the tone, with its smart switch from Tilly Plump into Ahint da Daeks o Voe over percussive snap of guitar and rattling bodhran and on into the Scallowa Lasses. Similarly the Da Boys o’ Da Lounge set sees James Hill’s venerable Newcastle Hornpipe wondrously reinvigorated.

Blue Rose Code: Bright Circumstance (Ronachan Songs) Jubilant, prayerful, compassionate, Caledonian soul maestro Ross Wilson’s latest iteration of his Blue Rose Code band sees his songs bursting with heart, supported by such jazz and folk luminaries as drummer Stuart Brown, saxophonist Paul Towndrow, accordionist Donald Shaw and Eddi Reader on support vocals. On one hand, high-energy numbers include the bouncy brass and Paul Harrison’s sparkly piano of the life-affirming Never Know Why, and a distinct touch of the Van Morrisons as Wilson lets rip in Amazing Grace, complete with gospel chorus. In contrast comes the benediction of Peace in Your Heart, while Sadie portrays a blighted life to a sigh of steel guitar.

Beth Malcolm: Folkmosis (Own Label) Recently voted Scots Singer of the Year in the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards, Beth Malcolm is a passionately open-hearted singer. Her second album is an extraordinary, lavishly produced and at times painfully honest coming of age narrative, as she retraces her sometimes rocky road to fulfilment. Between spoken-word links, she’s accompanied by a host of musicians, including guitarist and producer Dorian Cloudsley, fiddler Eryn Rae, pianist Alan Benzie, drummer Mark Scobie and the strings of the Sorcha Quartet. Songs range from the yearning of Meet Me By the Goretree, through the disillusionment of Ghosted and the wry realisation of Rolling Stone. There’s political enlightenment in her impassioned, solo rendition of The Worker’s Song before, ultimately, I Am Bound and The Mountain herald a powerful re-embracing of heritage and the natural world.

Ewen Henderson

Ewen Henderson: Lèirsinn (Sgadan Records) Lèirsinn – Gaelic for “perception” – encapsulates Glasgow-based Highland multi-instrumentalist and singer Ewen Henderson’s intriguing lockdown project, when he made imaginary journeys, via maps and books, to places that he knew and a few that he didn’t. Post-pandemic, he visited them physically, and the resulting music is deeply personal and richly evocative, his own singing and playing augmented by such weel-kent names as Megan Henderson, Iain MacFarlane and Su-a Lee. Coire Mhic Fhearchair, for instance, evokes the spectacular corrie on Beinn Eighe, and commemorates the RAF Lancaster crew who crashed there in 1951. Elsewhere, the stately fiddle and whistle calling of Nuallan echoes the autumnal belling of rutting stags.

Alison McMorland: Some Ballads of Anna Gordon, Mrs Brown of Falkland (Own Label) Hailed as “a major event in ballad scholarship”, this beautifully produced album (with 60-page booklet) sees Alison McMorland, a renowned interpreter of the “muckle sangs”, along with two other fine singers, Jo Miller and McMorland’s daughter, Kirsty Potts, give meticulous performances of ballads collected by the remarkable Anna Gordon, an important source of Scots balladry towards the end of the 18th century. Gordon often recounted these tales from a woman’s perspective or gave their female protagonists agency in male-dominated world. Accompanied just occasionally by fiddler Daniel Thorpe, flautist Owen Sutcliffe and guitarist Alasdair Roberts, McMorland and company render such ballads as Thomas Rhymer and the Queen of Elfland, The Cruel Sister, Lamkin and Lady Maisry with poised assurance and crystal clarity.