We’re fans of Avi Engel here at At The Barrier. back in October 2025, we described their previous album, Mote, as: “…quite remarkable… an album that will stand the test of time and one which the listener will repeatedly turn to like a treasured memory.”

Like many commentators, we’ve never been able to pin a label on Avi Engel’s music. There’s certainly an element of chamber folk in the sounds they produce but, really, Avi’s is music that defies categorisation. In the past, we’ve referred to their work as: “a musical tableau” and that’s a description that fits new album, Seedhead, like a familiar old glove.

Avi themselves describe Seedhead as: “…a slow-burning song cycle that is part eco-horror and part spiritual meditation,” and that’s a splendid turn of phrase. These are songs that are – sometimes by turn, sometimes simultaneously – vivid, haunting, unsettling and restorative.

The instrumentation is imaginative and far-reaching, with cello, lap steel, bass clarinet and French horn all adding substance to Avi’s four-string, six-string and bass guitars. There are even choruses of birdsong and frogsong that add to the folksy, mystical sensuality of these tunes. And, at the centre of everything lies that crystal-clear, startlingly melodic voice – the voice that we’ve become so fond of over the past couple of years…

If you haven’t come across Rob Lytle before, the first thing you’ll notice is his voice. It’s a classic American singer-songwriter voice that draws immediate comparison to James Taylor and, even more noticeably, to Jackson Brown.

Rob’s music has been described as: “a sonic breath of fresh air” and is packed with well-crafted songs, clear, expressive vocals and top-notch musicianship. Americana Dream is Rob’s fourth album and it’s the product of a long, long gestation. Indeed, over ten years have past since Rob’s previous album, You. Must. Stop was released to widespread acclaim.

Americana Dream is produced by Merel Bregante, a multi award-winning producer and veteran studio drummer, with a long record of success with Loggins & Messina, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Chris Hillman and Dan Fogelberg. The album’s long list of participating musicians includes legendary pedal steel player Dave Pearlman, Texan singer-songwriter and accordionist Lori Beth-Brooke and guitarist Matt Cartsonis, who’s worked with – amongst others – Warren Zevon and Glen Campbell.

From the first bars of opening track Annabelle to the final fade out of Bump Along, the album’s closing number, Bregante’s production is as clean as a brand new whistle. Every instrument is given the space it needs to breathe and the vocals are uniformly pristine.

The mood is laid-back Americana, with nods in the directions of jazz (Shame on Me), self-pitying humour (Dancing in a Small Town), Western swing (She Owns the Jukebox) and authentic early rock ‘n’ roll (Drive All Night). Pedal-steel-drenched heartbreak gets its share of coverage, most notably with Heartbreak Town, and Rob has chosen the blues to wrap things up, with the reflective The One Thing That Makes You Laugh and the clangy, sleazy Bump Along.

Well worth a listen!

Jaime Chirif Watanabe is a Peruvian sound artist, guitarist and composer. He’s a guitarist by training but many years of involvement with electronics and sound design, particularly in relation to video games and experimental films has left a lasting impact upon the music he creates.

With his album, Garabatos, Jaime develops his guitar-based compositions into nine electric and acoustic symphonies, using his own process of synthesis, sound design and editing.

Garabatos is divided into two sections – the first with Jaime’s electric guitar at its core, and the second focused upon acoustic guitar. The combinations of guitar and electronic effects shift and overlap, creating trajectories designed to alter the listener’s perception of space and time.

Garabatos, the album’s title, comes from one of the processes that Jaime has applied during the album’s composition – the creation of visual and sonic doodles. And Jaime’s overall aim? Rather than to establish an equivalence between image and sound, it’s to bring together two processes that gradually influence one another.

Chadwick is clearly in no rush to disclaim his ongoing association with the Levellers, with Jez Cunningham’s distinctive artwork unmistakably revealing the singer’s lineage. But, that aside, OK, and Chadwick’s sandstone tenor, there is little that allies this record to that of the Brighton stalwarts.

For a start, whilst Chadwick is largely wielding his trusty acoustic throughout, much the associated sound comes from treatments and effects, the full studio as instrument schtick. With the titlular opener being an 8 minute magnum opus, the gauntlet is laid down to any Bristol based trip-hop collective needing a new voice in their repertoire, as ambient sounds and recorded noise battle for a dominance of the drones.

Elsewhere across the other 5 tracks, each clocking in respectively between 3 and 6 minutes plus, Chadwick rings subtle changes, song by song, as structure is gradually struck from the glorious abyss exposed. But once, with the penultimate Bearing Witness, also the shortest track, does he have you remember his band. This is a challenging and exciting piece of work that should shatter any thought for a moment that his muse is spent.

Now, this is good, and, should it be required, is also as good a primer around the range and state of American music over the past sixty plus years as you might need, as Migliorelli plucks myriad influences from far across the canon.

Migliorelli is no spring chicken, honing his talent over several decades, between taking necessary and notable employment to afford his returning to have his itch scratched. But, sounding anything but an old-timer, he has morphed and melded his pleasures into 9 songs that shout out authenticity and the road, a life led hard.

The lyrics, full of references to broken levees and crooked lines, they could almost write themselves, with a precision band cranking out aseasoned rock/soul/country hybrid and more, guitars, dual keys and the sort of no-nonsense rhythm section that shouts out classic midwestern vibes. That a pair of Springsteen alumni, Soozie Tyrell on fiddle and Lisa Lowell on backing vocals, comes as little surprise, he and Bob Seger, Tom Petty even, being good touchstones.

Standout tracks are Michigan, a paean to his old band buddies, to whom he remains close, and the openly political Fire Road, unlikely to endear him much to the tangerine tyrant. Add snatches that could come from New York street corners and loose LA reggae-lite, and it’s a case of come on down, Frank, we’re ready for ya’.

Anyone expecting just the lush electro-pop that Catherine Anne Davies is undoubtedly accomplished at might be here in for a (pleasant) surprise. I was, expecting similar fare to 2023’s covers set, Versions. Here there is so much more, with a less brittle and more organic feel to it. I loved those icy covers, but life events and circumstances have dealt a much rounder hand to her palette.

Informed by becoming a mother, and, at the same time, discovering more about her past, in particular her grandmother’s voice, discovered on an old cassette, she has found greater warmth than might have earlier seemed apparent. Yes, most the sounds remain electronic, if via vintage analogue synths, these emanating from no less than Pete Townshend’s lavish collection.

Enrolling kindred spirits such as Gwenno Saunders and Hannah Peel, to flesh out the sometimes dark, often angry yet always human songs, another presence is that of old buddy, James Dean Bradfield, she often a guest of his band. And, if that seems a mismatch, she’s ahead of you, mindful and manipulative of the subversion gained thereby.

There are moody instrumental interludes, that sit around the confessional and confrontational songs, together with the snatched sounds of others: that cassette with her grandmother and the happy sound of her child. I wasn’t expecting all this, and I’m grateful.