Country Living UK May 2019

It was on a mountainside in Cumbria that the first whispers of Cate Le Bon’s fifth studio album poked their buds above the earth. “There’s a strange romanticism to going a little bit crazy and playing the piano to yourself and singing into the night,” she says, recounting the year living solitarily in the Lake District which gave way to Reward. By day, ever the polymath, Le Bon painstakingly learnt to make solid wood tables, stools and chairs from scratch; by night she looked to a second-hand Meers — the first piano she had ever owned —for company, “windows closed to absolutely everyone”, and accidentally poured her heart out. The result is an album every bit as stylistically varied, surrealistically-inclined and tactile as those in the enduring outsider’s back catalogue, but one that is also intensely introspective and profound; her most personal to date.

Leeds-formed Drahla have de ned their own vital subset of art-rock with Useless Coordinates, a debut album that's as fearless as it is enthralling. Speaking from her current base in south-east London with bassist Rob Riggs, singer/guitarist Luciel Brown recounts the record's somewhat chaotic gestation. "Most of last year was spent touring, so we were squeezing writing and recording in from the beginning of 2018 until end of August." In-between a headline tour, support slots with Ought and METZ, and multiple festival appearances - including at Meltdown at the request of The Cure's Robert Smith - Brown, Riggs and Wakefield-based drummer Mike Ainsley managed 10 days in the studio in total.

On each of their past two albums, the San Francisco new wave noise punks POW! moved further from the scratchy lo-fi attack of the debut Hi-Tech Boom and closer to a slicker, poppier version of that sound. Their fourth album, 2019's Shift, not only halts the progression but moves to an even more avant-garde, borderline bonkers approach. The duo of Byron Blum (guitar/vocals) and Melissa Blue (synth/vocals) are joined by Froth drummer Cameron Allen and producer Thomas Dolas and they concoct a sound that is more angular, more nervous, and twice as twitchy as anything they've recorded yet.

Simon Reeve travels from Alaska to Central America.

'Dreams About Falling' is perhaps Jamie Freeman's most startlingly honest and remarkably vulnerable abum yet. Produced in Nashville by Grammy-nominated Neilson Hubbard, Freeman skillfully tackles subjects such as parental expectations, childhood potential, and facing up to the possibility of falling short of those aspirations. These themes may be further understood when the context of Freeman's talented family is brought into the picture. With a BAFTA and Emmy award-winning brother, Martin, and Frazier Chorus indie-dance musician (signed to 4AD, Virgin) brother, Tim, one can imagine that the family outlook has always been to 'aim high'.

Tom Russell is perhaps the only living American songwriter who could get away with describing his album as "Jack Kerouac meets Johnny Cash…in Bakersfield." It may read like conceit, but his work over the last 45 years has earned him that claim. Russell is a renaissance man: He writes songs that have been covered by Cash, Ian Tyson, Doug Sahm, Iris DeMent, and more; he is also a fine painter, poet, essayist, and author.

UK collection. Ace's Songwriters series continues to be one of our most popular, with plenty of worthy candidates for inclusion waiting in the wings to join those we have already featured. This month we spotlight the work of a man whose songs and records have been enjoyed across seven decades. Paul Simon's compelling songs have been subject to covers since the mid-60s, when he and his singing partner Art Garfunkel made their own big breakthrough as artists with "Sounds Of Silence". American Tunes features almost two dozen of Paul's prime compositions, reinterpreted in all manner of styles from rock to reggae to acapella to adult contemporary. All have been chosen to represent the diversity in Paul's writing, and also chosen because of the high quality of each individual reinterpretation.

Natasha Bedingfield spent most of the 2010s quietly, bouncing around on the small screen, spending time doing charitable work, and living in a world where "Unwritten" and "Pocketful of Sunshine" remained recurrent on both radio and television. Along the way, she put out plenty of non-LP singles, but an album called The Next Chapter never materialized and soon she parted ways with Epic/Sony.