Mairearad Green & Rachel Newton
Anna Bhan
(Shadowside Records)
★★★★★

MAIREARAD GREEN and Rachel Newton are both established Scottish musicians and also cousins. In this first joint collaboration, they have come together to celebrate the life of their great-great-grandmother Anna Bhan and her involvement in the Coigach resistance of 1852-1853 during the Highland Clearances.

Led by young women, the resistance is due to be commemorated by a statue in the area, so it seemed an appropriate time for a musical celebration as well. With songs in both Gaelic and English and the playing of pipes, accordion, harp, piano and viola the album takes us through the history of the period.

The Burning of the Writs refers to an incident when the women confronted the boat bearing the warrants and burned them in a bonfire and Not Today, Nor Tomorrow sums up the mood of defiance that runs throughout. An enjoyable way to learn about that period.

Jon Boden & the Remnant Kings
Parlour Ballads
(Hudson Records)
★★★★★

ONE of the most well-known folk musicians of recent times mainly as the lead singer of Bellowhead, Jon Boden’s new album is a piano-led recording of traditional folk songs.

It’s dedicated to the memory of his sorely missed bandmate Paul Sartin and Boden is keen to get away from the idea that piano music was solely the preserve of middle-class families in their drawing rooms: his great-great-grandfather ran a music shop where he would perform the latest parlour ballads.

On One April Morning is followed by the Napoleonic-era Bonny Bunch of Roses. From the darker side of the folk tradition, we have the murder ballad Prentice Boy, but also the music-hall feel of Old Brown's Daughter and an actual parlour song, Rose Of Allendale. Overall, an innovative reinterpretation of some great songs.

The Rheingans Sisters
Start Close In
(Self-Released)
★★★★★

SISTERS Anna and Rowan Rheingans are individually busy in many different folk projects, so this is their first album as a duo in four years. It’s well worth the wait, with its collection of songs in different languages celebrating the collective movement in folk music.

The album opens with Devils based on the traditional ballad The Devil and the Farmer's Wife  — but inspired by Frankie Armstrong's feminist reinterpretation of the misogynist tone in earlier versions. The theme of women staying strong and free continues in Un Voltigeur and Si Sabiatz Drolletas.

Rowan’s own composition Drink Up has a celebratory feel about the good things in life while acknowledging the bad and Over and Over Again acts as a way to cope with witnessing war unfold on social media. With multi-instrumentals, this album is a meditative look at the world around us.