Matt McGinn
Behind Evey Door: Dolmen
(Lane Records)
★★★★

MATT MCGINN is a Northern Ireland based singer-songwriter with five previous albums. This current album came about after being asked to take part in a community engagement programme that involved playing with a Loyalist flute band.

Coming from a Catholic background, he admits he found that terrifying, but he felt able to establish a common connection through growing up during the troubles.

Two songs from that project appear on the album including the opening track The Music which deals with the theme of Irish music and its migration to other parts of the world.

Rainbows is a poignant tribute to the courage of people who declare themselves gay in Northern Ireland, and the album ends with The Turning of the Tide inspired by busker Willie Campbell, who played the streets of Belfast in the 1960s.  

Exploring different themes of identity, this is an intriguing album.

The Rosie Hood Band
A Seed of Gold
(Little Red Recordings)
★★★★★

SIX years after her debut album The Beautiful and the Actual, Rosie Hood has now released this worthy follow-up, backed by a three-piece band.

She was born in Wiltshire but is now based in Sheffield. The album starts with the traditional The Swallow from her native area whille the new song Lyddie Shears tells the story of a shape-shifting 19th-century Wiltshire witch.

Themes of nature are explored in Hood's own songs Marrow Seeds and Ethe,l based on the life of Ethel Haythornthwaite, who spent her life campaigning for greenbelt land around Sheffield.

There are also songs of struggle, with a rousing version of the working-class women's anthem Bread & Roses and the final track Les Tricoteuses paying tribute to female campaigners throughout history and their fight against attempts to silence them. A very enjoyable album.

Jack Rutter
This Is Something Constant
(Self-released)
★★★★

YORKSHIRE-based folk-singer Jack Rutter has released the third part of a trilogy of albums which began with his debut Hills in 2017 and continued with Gold of Scar and Shale in 2019.

Backed by flute player Mike McGoldrick and fiddle and viola player Patsy Reid, Rutter’s album continues his unearthing of some rarer traditional folk songs. Opening track Bold Nevison the Highwayman tells the story of a 17th-century West Riding robber found in Holroyd's Collection of Yorkshire ballads (1892).

Sherburn Fair is a cheery Yorkshire folk song about rural customs and there are some Child ballads, including James Atley and Sir Fenix, with the familiar theme of an aristocratic villain trying to frame a younger man.

From the Cecil Sharp collection there is The Shepherd on the Mountain, a love song which does have a happy ending. Overall, this is a collection demonstrating the constancy of folk song and tradition.