Close your eyes and be transported. Not just to Greenwich Village, New York and America’s west, but to Copenhagen, Belfast and Swansea, from whence Dylan Thomas – dedicatee of “The Sparrow of Swansea” – set out on his adventures. The album was recorded in Austin, Texas, and the spirit and the sound of such country music greats as Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins and Roy Orbison permeate the music.

Russell is an architect of “Americana” and his mighty fistful of albums includes a series of folk operas, including the much-lauded Rose of Roscrae. His songs have been recorded by Cash, Doug Sahm and Nanci Griffith, among others, and then there’s his prose and his art, some of which adorns Folk Hotel. Russell is a genuine polymath who can indeed stand tall “in boots that have walked 10,000 miles”.

His sleeve note is brief: “My mind is an old folk hotel in the Village, haunted by troubadour ghosts who sang songs that will never escape my soul.” Nor should they, for those ghosts made music which will forever endure. The cover painting suggests the streets around Washington Square, the beating heart of the folk scene long before Bob Dylan hit town. The Hotel to which he refers could easily be the old Earle, where Dylan and Joan Baez and many of their confrères (whose presence you sense in these songs) lived and where Dylan Thomas stayed when he wasn’t at the Chelsea. A Russell painting of the latter adorns the CD.

No matter the style (traditional folk here, a touch of mariachi there, a cowboy song, talking blues) or the subject, Russell inhabits every track, his sometimes world-weary voice masterfully accompanied by guitar, the verses occasionally punctuated by harmonica. He’s both storyteller and guide, leading us down the foggy ruins of time in the company of such figures as James Joyce, Joseph Mitchell, JFK, Hank Williams and Ian Tyson in songs replete with literary and historical allusion. His ballad for Dylan Thomas is poignant indeed and the imagery of “All on a Belfast Morning” raises a smile: “Spanish Frankie with his ironmonger’s nose”, the cat “licking at her whiskers in a puddle”. “

The CD includes two bonus tracks: a cover of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, gentler and more empathetic than the Bob Dylan original, on which Russell trades verses with Joe Ely, and “Scars on His Ankles”, a tribute to the great Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Buy Folk Hotel and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, dim the lights and settle into a comfy chair. It’s all the company you need.

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Overleaf: Eight minute film in which Tom Russell talks about his Folk Hotel album

Rarely has an album’s artwork better reflected its content: blackness, or the void from which light occasionally emanates. This is a collection of instrumentals enhanced by vocals, rather than what might be called songs. The opening minimalist piece “Lightshaft” begins with a single plucked guitar note and its long vibrato-laden after-echo, like the sonic equivalent of a lone flickering candle.

Fellow defenders of the Delta tradition Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ have never recorded together before. Billed as a “historic collaboration”, this album features appearances from starry performers including Bonnie Raitt, and excellent young jazz singer Lizz Wright. After a couple of listens, however, fans will be dismayed at the misuse of the term “historic”. An opportunity was missed to do something original.  

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@russcoffey 

Overleaf: watch Alt-J's video for "3WW"

Wow! An unconventional opening for a book review maybe, but ‘“wow!” nonetheless.

To call Jim Jones a punk-blues dynamo is something of an understatement. Having already fronted three epic bands since the mid-Eighties in Thee Hypnotics, Black Moses and the Jim Jones Revue, he’s now ready to unleash the debut album by his latest combo, Jim Jones & The Righteous Mind. Super Natural, happily enough, shows no evidence of diminishing returns though and is actually considerably more than is needed to prove that Jones is still riding the garage rocket.

The opening track, “Dreams”, comes roaring through the speakers like an air raid. Primal and gritty rock’n’roll with fire and brimstone vocals, it opens up the Righteous Mind’s sonic stall with gusto. Swaggering and sleazy tunes follow with Jones’s yelps and howls of encouragement, duelling guitars with Malcolm Toon and a voodoo beat from Phil Martini’s sticks. It’s incendiary stuff that channels the spirit of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Tav Falco and Gallon Drunk into a sonic cacophony that aims straight at the guts with its raw and giddy ambience.

“Aldecide” and “Boil Yer Blood” may be loud and lairy highlights with a swaggering menace that can’t be ignored. But picking out particular tunes on Super Natural feels a bit churlish, given the consistently high-quality adrenalin-fuelled groove. It’s not quite all white-hot punk-blues sounds: towards the end of the disc “Shallow Grave” and “Everyone But Me” turn down the volume if not the menace. Whoozy and disconcerting ballads, they even give Toon the chance to lay out some melancholy sounds with his pedal steel as Jones croons things out.

An album as feisty and cliché-free as Super Natural is a rarity these days. However, given the similar magnificence of the Righteous Mind’s live show, it’s unlikely to be a flash in the pan and that can only be a good thing.

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Overleaf: watch the video of “Aldecide”