As energetic advocates for folk music go, Jon Wilks is one of the busiest. He runs the lively Tradfolk website (with its enviable wassailing directory), the excellent Old Songs podcast (dissecting ballads and tunes with guests from Jim Moray to Burd Ellen) and his three albums to date have included dusty deep dives into the broadside ballads of Birmingham and the wider West Midlands. He’s also a lightning rod for folk royalty past and present, with Martin Simpson, Eliza Carthy and Angeline Morrison all getting thanks on his new album’s liner notes.
Recorded after a serious illness left him recovering at home for three months in 2021, Before I Knew sees Wilks travelling beyond the Spaghetti Junction. Opener Tape Machine, one of three originals, starts on a note of jolting earnestness (“At the age of just 22 / I discovered my calling”) recalling the opening couplet of Simon and Garfunkel’s Leaves That Are Green, later referenced by Billy Bragg for A New England. Then it widens its eyes, remembering early mornings in Nagasaki (where Wilks once worked as a Time Out editor), Jeddah, Porto and Singapore. A mood of tender, thoughtful curiosity beds in.
These 12 tracks (several with backing vocals and arrangements from Jackie Oates) are a lively mix. Lofty Tall Ship and The Boatswain show off Wilks’s fingerpicking, bubbling away like warm water, as his broad accent loops around tales of brave boys and frolicsome wives. Will Watch has slowed-down folk-rock chops, while The Old Miner suggests slight tremors of a motorik groove in its synthesised handclaps. Wilks is at his best, though, when he’s keeping things simple, singing Roud ballads such as Erin, Sad Erin or another one of his originals, Greek Street, about teenage love and Swedish packing beds, against gentle accompaniments. Here, his sincerity glows.
Also out this month
The brainchild of Ernest Bergez, Sourdurent’s L’Herbe de Détourne, (Bongo Joe/Murailles Music) is a brilliantly unhinged 11-song set, inspired by Middle Eastern strings and minimalism as much as folk from the Auvergne, spiked with cabrettes (Auvergne bagpipes), fifes and bass lutes. Once in a folk duo with Ben Walker on Rough Trade, Josienne Clarke’s self-directed solo career is worth digging into. It includes brilliant covers of tracks such as Radiohead’s Nude, and now comes this Taylor Swift-inspired revisit of her earlier songs, Onliness: Songs of Solitude and Singularity (Corduroy Punk). Her voice is a breathtakingly lovely balm, while arrangements of The Tangled Tree and The Birds are stitched with glistening textures. The eponymous debut from new Malawi artist Keturah (Hen House Studios) is glorious too, mixing traditional tunes into mid-paced afro-funk and melodic pop, many tracks slumbering blissfully in the sunshine.
