The acclaimed US indie folk musician talks about escaping from religious cults, working with her ex, and why disconnecting from technology is fundamental to her creative process

In an industry known for its ruthless search for the next big thing, Adrianne Lenker is in it for the long haul. The 32-year-old American musician speaks as though she is in the early stages of a marathon: she is a “craftsperson”, who wrote her first song aged eight, recorded her debut album at 13, and is now in the process of figuring things out. “I still consider myself a beginner,” she says. “I have so many years left to work on writing songs and work on my instrument, and the more refined I get, the more skilled I get.” Certain songs are described as “sturdy”: “I’ll probably be singing this when I’m 60, you know?”

But the pace she is going at is closer to a sprint. Lenker is the lead singer, primary songwriter and guitarist of acclaimed folk rock band Big Thief; their fifth album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You , was a sprawling 20-track release described by the Observer as “wonderful… their most varied and expansive record to date”. She is about to release her fifth solo album, Bright Future , after 2020’s double offering Songs and Instrumentals . In addition, there have been compilations and several EPs put out with her ex-husband and current bandmate Buck Meek (more on which later).

(Cooking Vinyl)
Disquiet pervades the folk singer’s self-written fourth album, with romantic love and awe of nature holding out against ecological collapse

Over the past dozen years, no one has tended the sacred flame of folk song more assiduously than London’s Sam Lee . Singer, promoter , wilderness expert (he trained with Ray Mears), Lee’s principal mission has been “finding new soundworlds for old songs”, many of them learned at the hearths of the travelling community. His third album, 2020’s Old Wow , expanded the musical palette, setting Lee’s rich voice to innovative arrangements by Bernard Butler, the former Suede guitarist turned mature polymath.

songdreaming is more ambitious still. The songs are Lee’s own, their singer cast as a shamanic figure wandering through landscapes hymned in folk song and poetry but now facing ecological collapse. Opener Bushes and Briars begins as a leisurely search for birdsong that is gradually subsumed by a menacing churn of violin, piano, guitar and discordant noise. Numbers that start as languorous, melodic balladry mutate into chasms of space noise or, in the case of Meeting Is a Pleasant Place, thunderous defiance given voice by a trans choir, Trans Voices . Romantic love and awe of nature prove inseparable: “Be soft like green moss, be free,” urges Lee. The record’s dreamlike atmosphere is seductive and disquieting; a moving tribute to Albion’s troubled soul.

(Polydor)
The country crossover star’s sixth album opens with a spectacular one-two of the most beautiful songs you’ll hear all year – but the loved-up mood and back-to-nature wonder becomes twee

K acey Musgraves has put the bong down. “I used to wake and bake,” croons the country crossover star on her sixth album’s transcendentally gorgeous title track. “Everything I did seemed better when I was high, I don’t know why.” The 35-year-old’s erstwhile weed habit won’t come as a huge surprise to fans: she claimed her 2018 album Golden Hour was partly written under the influence of LSD, while its follow-up Star-Crossed took shape after a guided psilocybin mushroom trip. Yet on Deeper Well – an album teeming with 60s folk energy and a sense of crunchy, tree-hugging wonder – Musgraves still sounds like she’s tripping. Her drug of choice this time round? Love: new, true and self.

Musgraves, as you may have surmised, is not your run-of-the-mill country singer, and hasn’t been for some time. A rare example of a Nashville stalwart who achieved recognition this side of the Atlantic, she became a breakout star in the 2010s, famous for her spiky portraits of small-town life and vocal support for the LGBTQ+ community. On Golden Hour, an extended love letter to her then husband, she incorporated electropop and disco into her palette, winning the Grammy for album of the year. Star-Crossed, inspired by her subsequent divorce, was a restrained and, for some, anticlimactic sequel, yet it cemented her standing as a mainstream artist able to thrive outside her original country context while retaining the genre’s sonic markers – a trajectory not dissimilar to pop overlord Taylor Swift’s.

Paul Mescal spoke Gaeilge at the Baftas, Cillian Murphy at the Oscars. Films are being written in it, dramas acted in it – and rappers are translating drug lingo into it. Our writer hails an extraordinary renaissance

Grindr, Saghdar agus Cher is a modern play about hook-ups, dating apps and going on a bender. But the most current thing about it may be that the piece, staged by LGBTQ+ collective Aerach Aiteach Gaelach, is performed entirely in Irish.

“We just wanted to show that these things are happening in Irish,” co-writer Ciara Ní É says of the drama, which lands in Dublin this week. “We have slang, we have messy nights, and it’s all as Gaeilge ” – that is, in the Irish language. “It’s real in that sense,” she continues. “These things happen around the country regularly.” The title only barely needs translating (“saghdar” means cider), but the show itself is unapologetically in the native tongue. “It has English subtitles. We do try to be accessible,” says Ní É.

Lauren Collier says there is a public appetite for learning about working-class history. And Austen Lynch argues that folk ballads carry the voice of ‘history from below’

As Sean Curran, the head of inclusion at Historic England , said in your article ( ‘Hidden stories’: Historic England funds 56 projects on working-class heritage, 21 February ), it can seem that stories of working-class life are more ephemeral. As a society, we have not always considered that records of the banalities of everyday life are worth keeping. But records do exist.

At the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, we have documents and testimonies that reference the individual lives of the working classes in the Ironbridge Gorge from the 18th to 20th centuries. We used them in 2023 when we created our temporary exhibition The Daily Grind. The exhibition was focused on the stories of working-class people during the Industrial Revolution, as opposed to the industrialists and masters, and was our most popular exhibition in recent years. While this type of original source may be limited, there is no doubt that the stories such diaries, documents and even recordings enabled us to tell provided personal insight and flavour that delighted our visitors. Visitors were also invited to write down their own stories or memories of family members who had worked in industries in the Ironbridge Gorge, and in this way the exhibition helped provide further contacts and information for recording working-class stories.

(Brownswood Recordings)
The singer trades acoustic improvisation for intricate, infectious hooks, with flavours of bossa nova, neo-soul and doo-wop

Since the release of her 2015 debut album Nueva Era , Cuban singer Daymé Arocena has established herself as one of her country’s most expressive voices. Encompassing everything from nimble jazz scatting to luscious orchestrations and breathy phrases that soar over bata drums and Santería folk rhythms, Arocena’s four albums have explored the joyous range of Afro Cuban music. Her latest record is a departure. Where Arocena has previously made music rooted in acoustic improvisation, Alkemi veers into Latin pop with 10 tracks of earworming hooks, synth melody and snapping electronic percussion.

Opener Que Se Lo Lleve el Mar sets the tone, establishing stacked harmonies of Arocena’s husky voice over minimal synth stabs before erupting into an infectious double-time shuffle. The propulsive feel continues, from Por Ti’s bossa nova horn fanfares to the languorous neo-soul of Suave y Pegao and sultry doo-wop stylings of Como Vivir Por El. These aren’t pristine arena-fillers, but intricate and emotive tracks full of subtle touches. The album could benefit from a moment where the full force of Arocena’s voice is unleashed, but this is the sound of a singer poised for crossover success.

(Transgressive)
The musician-actor and the writer follow their inspiring lockdown debut with another buoyant fusion of English folk and big themes

The sunny positivity of the first collaboration between singer-songwriter-actor Johnny Flynn and nature writer Robert Macfarlane , 2021’s Lost in the Cedar Wood , felt like a genuine bright spot amid the bleakness of the pandemic. The genesis of this follow-up was far more pleasant – some of the songs came into being during walks on the South Downs (most notably Song With No Name), rather than as a result of exchanged WhatsApp messages and voice memos during lockdown – but the elements that made that first record so enjoyable remain in place: uplifting and muscular English folk stylings, courtesy of Flynn, with ancient and modern themes interwoven in these co-written lyrics.

It’s a record of two distinct halves, either side of glorious, modern-day wassail song The Sun Also Rises. It opens in more upbeat style, despite weighty subject matter – burials, death rituals, AI – while the second half is quieter and more introspective, the pandemic-inspired Year-Long Winter evoking thaw and new growth emerging from the cold and dark. By turns celebratory and thought-provoking, The Moon Also Rises is a joy.

(Penny Fiddle)
Bristol-based multi-instrumentalist Elliott and Cairo-based oud virtuoso Elazhary and friends run the gamut from morris dance to classical Arabic traditions

Bristol-based Tamsin Elliott is a musician with a roving ear. Grounded in British folk, she has explored Mediterranean influences with the fusion group Solana, while her 2022 solo debut, Frey , extended her reach into Arabic music. Here she teams with Egyptian oud player Tarek Elazhary to explore the parallels between their respective traditions: 16th-century English dance tunes and classical Arabic melodies, backwoods jigs and Cairo folk. The outcome is a poised, atmospheric fusion delivered by two master players who first met during Elliott’s lengthy pre-Covid stay in Egypt.

It’s a delight, from the delicate, opening harp melody of In the Grey of the Morning, which is taken up by the deeper sounds of the oud and ends with birdsong. By contrast comes the bustling El Hara, a portrait of a busy urban alley overlaid with sinuous flute and fiddle. Much of Elliott’s playing is on a specially tuned accordion, with a Middle Eastern flavour on the title track (a reference to progress in women’s rights) before slipping into morris territory. Amid flurries from the oud and tumbling harp, there are reeds and string accompaniments from a clutch of UK musicians, and a striking rendition of a Sayed Darwish song from Leila El Balouty. A winning creation.