The winter solstice occurs tomorrow, 21 December. Stonehenge, one of this island’s most significant structures, is constructed in alignment with the setting sun on that day. After the solstice, the days lengthen and a new cycle of the year begins.

Fifty years after their first album The Garden Of Jane Delawney was issued in April 1970, Trees seem to be better known than when they were active. Despite Françoise Hardy’s cover version of the title track a couple of years after it hit shops, the UK band’s debut album was a poor seller. Original pressings fetch upwards of £200. It’s the same with its follow-up, January 1971’s On The Shore. This one sells for at least £250.

I really wanted to like this album – indeed, from a short sample, I thought I would love it. But while there are indeed some lovely moments, repeated listenings fail to persuade me of anything other than two good musicians with evident talents who have been too clever by half with a baker’s dozen of traditional and modern folk songs and fatally compromised the qualities that make such music unique – its glorious clarity and simplicity.

It’s 50 years since Martin Simpson dropped out of college to follow his vocation as a guitarist and his intention had been to celebrate the milestone with a live album. The best-laid plans… Instead Home Recordings finds him live in his living room and on his Peak District porch, the sounds of nature captured on “Lonesome Valley Geese” and on “March 22”, the brief closing track.

As this review goes live on the internet – an invisible medium even more pervasive than coronavirus – we’ve just enjoyed All Hallow’s Eve with not only a Blue Moon but October’s Hunter’s Moon, too, gazing down upon us from the constellation of Taurus, while today is All Souls’ Day, when the spirits of the dead are abroad and life is celebrated and decorated with skulls and skeletons.

It’s 45 years since the West End success of John, Paul, George, Ringo… and Bert put a young Scottish folkie named Barbara Dickson on the map, launching a career that brought richly-deserved success on stage and screen, as well as in music. She’s since recorded 25 studio albums and enjoyed major singles success.

Music has never been more important than in these dark, dislocating and death-stalked days, fear and grief visiting us in ways once unimaginable. The lack of live music – the lack even of the possibility of live music in the near future – is an absence keenly felt. However much we love to listen in the isolation of our own headphones, nothing can ever replace the communal concert event.

Cara Dillon and Sam Lakeman were bringing it all back home when they performed their first live stream concert from Cooper Hall, in Frome, Somerset, close to were they live and where they recorded Dillon’s 2017 album, Wanderer. Like that somewhat “accidental” album, Thursday’s concert was strong on “songs of departure and longing for home”, many of them drawn from Wanderer and many referencing the places close to where she grew up and some of them specific childhood experiences. Homesick blues, but not so subterranean as it were. All the crew was local.

A couple of years ago a vinyl white label appeared of a track called “Crumbling Down”. It was a breath of fresh air. Warmly crafted Afro-centric percussion, pared back but persuasive, it dragged the ears in, emanating a heads-down beachside vibe.

We are no nearer live music returning and, as venues across the country face financial collapse, it’s clear that even when we reach some sort of "new normal", far from all will be left standing. This is clearly a disaster for British music. #SaveOurVenues offers an opportunity to help over 500 UK venues stay alive: details here. In the meantime, as ever, there's still plenty happening online.