STEVE JOHNSON relishes a celebration of the commonality of folk music and its links with the struggles of working people the world over

Marc Ribot
Songs of Resistance 1942-2018
(Anti-Records)
★★★★★
MADE up of original compositions and traditional songs, this remarkable album from veteran New York City guitarist Marc Ribot is a forceful reaction to the election of President Donald Trump.
Unpolished, musically varied and often angry, it’s like a lost soundtrack to Howard Zinn’s seminal book A People’s History of the United States.
Tom Waits growls through Italian anti-fascist tune Bella Ciao, while Sam Amidon and Fay Victor are the guest vocalists on How To Walk in Freedom, a 1970s soul-sounding civil rights hymn to Rosa Parks, Emma Goldman and Malcolm X.

New releases from Steady Habits, Jeff Tweedy, and Tom Skinner

IAN SINCLAIR welcomes a lucid critique of a technology that reproduces and enables oppression, power, and environmental devastation

Reviews of new releases by Wednesday, Suede, and Nation of Language

Reviews of new releases by Jens Lekman, Big Thief, and Christian McBride Big Band