The return of Crumbling Ghost with a hefty portion of stirring heavy psychedelic folk rock. Taking hold of traditional folk material – think murder ballads, supernatural reckonings and cautionary tales – such as Bows Of London and The Unquiet Grave, plus a dip into Norwegian trad, they subvert the tried and trusted and often twee, rearranging and refracting through the haze and heft of heavy, fuzzy stoner rock with a chunk of psyche and a smattering of doom.

Bows and Bill Norrie form a tremendous opening assault, delivering the sort of lethal blows from which it proves difficult to recover. The latter develops into is a swirling tempest and Wassail has never sounded so fearsome. A concession to a folky jig sees Lovely Joan parking the fiddles and given a riffy guitar accompaniment where for a brief spell, the reverb and fuzz are ever so slightly dialled down. For the most though, the sustain and overdrive are turned up to eleven and simply ooze from the speakers.

Partnering up Crumbling Ghost with our Folk and Doom Metal faves, Green Lung, would be a potent offering.

Often referred to as: The Hillbilly Pink Floyd, The Slambovian Circus of Dreams have been around since the late 1990s. Their music is a unique and thoroughly enticing blend of Woodstock-tinged mysticism, southern rock swagger, British folk-rock and wholly original songwriting.

The Slambovian roadshow first caught our eyeFriday afternoon set at Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, 2022. On that occasion, the band were giving a push to their (then) new album, A Very Unusual Head and they left us with a pair of indelible earworms – that album’s title track and the infectious Beez (I Know Where the Beez Have Gone).

The Slambovians are a phenomenal live act and their onstage energy is captured and bottled on 13 – Live, their new album. Recorded at a WAMC Radio show in Albany, New York in November 2024, the album captures the band at their live best. The tracklisting includes the aforementioned earworms, plus 11 other songs from across the band’s extensive canon.

Named in honour of the USA’s 250th birthday, the album takes its title from the original 13 states that formed the embryonic Union and, to mark our cousins’ semiquincentennial, there’s a a rousing 2008 live performance of The Star Spangled Banner recorded at a Tampa Bay Lightning hockey game and features Slambovian’s frontman Joziah Longo, guitarist Sharkey McEwan, multi-instrumentalist Tink Lloyd on piccolo and ex-drummer Tony Zuzulo. The perfect place to start with the Slambovians.

We’ve already had a good deal of prior notice of this one. Singles Just Begun, Small Town Life and, most recently, Ode to Me and You, have already drifted across our desk and received our seals of approval. Inded, just a few days ago, we issued our confident prediction that Ode to Me and You will, unquestionably, become a Jamie Webster live show favourite.

The parent album is here at last and Running Round the Sun is an album that sees Jamie growing in confidence. Recorded at the legendary Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, the album is produced by Dave Eringa, famed for his work with, amongst others, the Manic Street Preachers. Jamie’s songs see him trying to reconcile the effects that fame has had upon him. In the words of the album’s Press Release: “It’s nothing if not honest.”

“This album is about trying to make sense of it all,” says Jamie. “Life, pressure, expectations, the way things are changing around us – and still holding onto who you are through it.”

At The Barrier’s admiration of Welsh folk-rockers Rusty Shackle goes back quite a few years. We were knocked sideways by the band’s 2022 album, Under a Bloodshot Moon and, more recently, we were moved to comment that Rusty Shackle are a band “…well-worth looking out for,” after their stunning performance at last year’s Cropredy Brasenose Fringe.

Rusty Shackle’s new album, Mayfield, sees the band embrace a a more stripped-back and reflective sound that’s perfectly matched to their exploration of themes such as friendship, perseverance and what the band describe as: “rebuilding confidence through difficult moments.”

At its core, Mayfield is about resilience. Resilience that is found by placing trust in the people around us or by navigating uncertainty. Either way, it’s about rebuilding when life doesn’t go to plan.

Regular Rusty Shackle followers may well be surprised by the predominance of acoustic instrumentation on Mayfield. But the surprise is a pleasant one – similar to the wave of understanding that I felt when I first listened to Led Zeppelin III after enjoying the bombast of its predecessor. I reckon that the band are right when they suggest that Mayfield represents the start of a new chapter in the story of Rusty Shackle.

The re-packaging of Tull’s j-tull.com album as Another Cast Of The Net package casts a new light on their 1999 album, newly remixed by Bruce Soord (The Pineapple Thief) in stereo and surround sound, including Dolby Atmos.

A decent latter day Tull album, Hunt By Numbers trades on an Aqualung-y riff – shades of IA’s solo work that was about to emerge (and did as a hidden track on the original release) and amongst the ‘if it sounds like Tull, it must be Tull’ music, Bends Like A Willow is nice and atmospheric, there’s the likes of Hot Mango Flush that doesn’t.

Aside the standard array of mixes and revisions, the usual appeal comes in the extras – in this case a disc of bonus material, including 6 completely unreleased studio tracks & 3 live recordings taken from the bands tour in 2000. The Live pickings are sparse (only three!?) although bonus tracks fill out the set. The latter not totally essential – but making for a more complete vision of the era.

A slightly disappointing lite version of the superb Chrysalis reissue series which could easily be described as definitive – a dozen or so heavyweights sit on my shelf. No video or complete concert recordings although out there lie the Living With The Past CD/DVD sets and excerpts from Jethro Tull Around The World multi- DVD which document this era. Hmmm – We’re accustomed to much better.