The ‘Best of…’ Lists are beginning and there's lots of love for our artists. Check out the nods so far and stay tuned for additions:

ROLLING STONE
50 Best Albums of 2008
#14 Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cardinology

Adams' best LP in years seeks the heights of Gram Parsons' country and U2's stadium rock. He belts out his heartland gospel on "Born Into a Light" and gathers himself for the sobriety ballad "Stop." And then "Magick" shows that he'll never totally calm down.

#18 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

Lucinda Williams has been channeling hard-won wisdom into laments for so long, it is a shock to behold the singer love-struck. Williams being Williams, the happy songs hedge their bets, but high spirits predominate, as do snarling Stones-ish guitars, brisk tempos and a slew of funny punch lines.

Singles of the Year
#13 "Magick" by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals

A hot, grinding rocker that recalls R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It" : Adams envisions a mushroom cloud while hollering "Turn up the radio!" Rock on, dude.

#95 "Real Love" by Lucinda Williams

An equal-opportunity rave-up from contemporary country's godmother. First it's "Be my girl," then it's "Be my man," as the guitarists duke it out for Mama.


BLENDER
Top 33 of 2008
#33 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

Top 144 Songs of 2008
#13 "Real Love" from Lucinda Williams

USA TODAY
Critics Pick for Best of '08
Ken Barnes - #1 Elvis Costello, Momofuku
Elysa Gardner - #4 Johnny Flynn, A Larum
Edna Gundersen - #3 Elvis Costello, Momofuku

TIME
Top 10 of 2008
#9 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

NO DEPRESSION
Top 40 Albums of 2008
#2 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind
#6 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey
#7 Shelby Lynne, Just A Little Lovin'

PASTE
Top 50 of 2008
#9 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey
#37 Johnny Flynn, A Larum

MOJO
Americana Top 10
#2 Hayes Carll

SPIN
40 Best Albums of 2008
#30 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

BLURT
Best of 2008
#15 Lucinda Willams, Little Honey

LA TIMES
Pop & Hiss - the Best of 2008
Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

This Texan is the country find of the year thanks to sharply etched sketches of people and situations that always feel pulled straight out of the honky-tonks and blue highways rather than market-researched to expand a demographic. With his laconic, off-the-cuff vocals, it's easy to underestimate just how smart his songs are. But there's no question: Hayes Carll is the real deal.

NEWSDAY
Best Albums of 2008
#2 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

Happiness suits Lucinda Williams. On "Little Honey," she rolls out non-sappy love songs ("Tears of Joy"), alt-country prayers for serenity ("The Knowing" and "Heaven Blues") and all-out rockers ("Honey Bee" and "Real Love"). But it all pales next to the brilliant "Little Rock Star," an epic tale of pending celebrity disaster told over girl-group harmonies and echoing U2 guitars, that proves that happy doesn’t have to mean blissfully ignorant.

10 Best Live Moments
#9 Hayes Carll at the Bowery Ballroom, May 9

"I don't have a lot of love songs," Carll told the Bowery Ballroom crowd. "I have a lot of sex songs." And he delivered them well – along with his great songs about drinking, playing in bars and love gone wrong.

AMERICANA MUSIC ASSOCIATION & AWARDS
Song of the Year
"She Left Me For Jesus" from Hayes Carll

ALL MUSIC GUIDE
Favorite Albums of 2008
Elvis Costello, Momofuku
Shelby Lynne, Just A Little Lovin'

Favorite Country Albums
Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

AMERICAN SONGWRITER
Our Top 25 Albums
#12 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

WFUV
The Year on Vinyl: Best of 2008
#1 Shelby Lynne, Just A Little Lovin'

My favorite album of the year comes with authentic wear and tear. It's analog all the way -- recorded to tape, old-school-style, with Phil Ramone at the helm. The sparse arrangements really allow Lynne's vocals to own the spotlight.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Best of 2008
#6 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

POPMATTERS
Best Albums of 2008
#34 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

Best Singles of 2008
#43 "Rarity" from Lucinda Williams

ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE
Unruly Top 10
#3 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

Carll, a fellow Hendrix alumnus, made a Texas singer-songwriter album that was smarter and funnier than anything else this year. Also, do yourself a favor and find the videos on YouTube that capture Carll's sardonic stage patter.

NPR
Listeners Poll
#34 Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cardinology
#39 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

FILTER'S TOP 10 of 2008: DAY 14
Ed Harcourt's Top Albums
#6 Johnny Flynn, A Larum

ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT & CHRONICLE
Top 10 List
Hayes Carll, Trouble in Mind

Texas troubadour Hayes Carll reminds me of so many of the greats, my head spins like it's full of whiskey. I hear John Prine, Todd Snider, Townes Van Zandt and Tom Waits (he covers a Waits song, "I Don't Wanna Grow Up"). Carll writes from an eloquently poetic, buzz-hazy, lazy, downtrodden point of view, dropping lines of universal clarity, whether he writes 'em or borrows 'em, as though they were empty liquor bottles. "Doesn't anybody speak about truth anymore? Maybe that's what songs are for."

ESQUIRE
Five Best Songs You (Probably) Didn't Hear in 2008
#4 "She Left Me for Jesus" by Hayes Carll

"She says I should find Him and I'll know peace at last / If I ever find Jesus I'm kickin' His ass." Pansy-ass country-radio programmers screamed blasphemy, but the true offense was denying their audience this song.

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Favorite Albums of 2008
#6 Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin'

MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
Our Favorite Albums
#1 Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin'
#8 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

NASHVILLE SCENE
Top 10 Country Albums of 2008
Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

The title of the opening song, "Drunken Poet's Dream," tips off the perspective of this 32-year-old singer-songwriter from South Texas. With the wry, wise voice of an educated rounder, he tackles liquor, wild women, lost weekends and the perils of strutting and stumbling through life. Carll sings colorfully and believably about experiences most modern country singers ignore -- or hide.

CLEVELAND PLAIN-DEALER
The Year in Review: Pop Music
#7 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

The belle of the Americana ball shines on "Real Love," a fun remake of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" and "Jailhouse Tears," a twangy duet with Elvis Costello.

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
20 Best Albums of 2008
#7 Anything from Lost Highway Records

I hate it when critics cheat like this, but the Americana label’s roster this year was so outstanding, it deserves special merit. If I had to pick only one title, it’d be a fight between Ryan Adams & the Cardinals’ Cardinology and Hayes Carll’s Trouble in Mind –- and Steve Earle sound-alike Carll would probably get the nod, if only to shed a little light on another budding cult hero. But just about every 2008 disc from Lost Highway is worthy of mention, whether from veterans (Lucinda Williams’ Little Honey, Van Morrison’s Keep It Simple, Elvis Costello’s Momofuku), newcomers you should seek out (Johnny Flynn’s A Larum) or O.C.’s own Donavon Frankenreiter. Even Shelby Lynne’s sleepy Dusty Springfield tribute grew on me. Even more reason to love these albums: Everything Lost Highway puts out is released on 180-gram vinyl, often with bonus tracks or different covers (like the alternate one for Cardinology you see here).

NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
Top Pop Albums of 2008
#9 Shelby Lynne, Just A Little Lovin'

Alt-country singer-songwriter Lynne takes songs recorded by the late Dusty Springfield ("I Only Want To Be With You," "The Look of Love," "Anyone Who Had a Heart"), reduces them to their essence, and makes them sound like heart-to-heart, late-night conversations.

SEATTLE-POST INTELLIGENCE
Best of 2008
#5 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

Williams proves that a happier, more fulfilled life can yield an album just as compelling as those of her more downcast, introspective periods. The album opens powerfully with the rocking "Real Love," but explores a full range of emotions in a 13-song collection showcasing her emotive, country-blues vocals. Among the gems is "Little Rock Star," an aching portrait of the danger and vulnerability of young male stardom.

COLLEGE TIMES
Best of 2008
#5 Johnny Flynn, A Larum
#6 Ryan Adams, Cardinology


AUSTIN CHRONICLE
Top 10 of 2008
#1 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey
#3 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Best Americana, Bluegrass & Country
#2 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

COUNTRY STANDARD TIME
the Best of 2008
#7 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

CREATIVE LOAFING
Top 10 CD's of 2008
#1 On Little Honey, alt-country queen Lucinda Williams returns to the more focused, rock-oriented sonics of her breakthrough 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.



AMERICANA RADIO
Top 100 Albums from 11/19/07 - 11/10/08
#1 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind
#6 Ryan Bingham, Mescalito
#19 Willie Nelson, Moment of Forever
#26 Van Morrison, Keep It Simple
#51 Lyle Lovett, It's Not Big It's Large
#59 Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin'

AMAZON
Top 100 Editors’ Pick
#9 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind
#14 Johnny Flynn, A Larum

Top 100 Customer Favorites
#12 Van Morrison, Keep It Simple
#27 Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin’
#47 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

Best Folk of 2008
#2 Johnny Flynn, A Larum
#8 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey
#10 Shelby Lynne, Just a Little Lovin’

Best Country of 2008
#1 Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind

Best Songs of 2008
#32 Hayes Carll, “Beaumont” from Trouble In Mind

Today, Marling draws on classic literary canons—the Brontë sisters are among her favorite writers—and a long tradition of folk music. Flynn displayed an equally lithe and literary touch on his highly praised album, A Larum. Before making his mark as a songwriter, he performed in an all-male Shakespearean theater troupe. And even though the Bard continues to be an inspiration, Flynn performs anything but golden oldies. “We’re playing instruments that have been around for hundreds of years,” he says, “but I believe that you can be present in your relationship to the past. The sound of my music has to be contemporary.”

» www.blackbookmag.com

For a young person fresh out of school and craving energy-channeling structure and tradition, there are many options: Join the Army; get a grad degree in something useless; try a career in folk music. Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn are two wide-eyed English singer-songwriters who chose the latter. During a two-night stand at the Hotel Café over the weekend, they each updated the UK tradition of the pastoral balladeer by pairing involved acoustic arrangements with the self-awareness characteristic of their Twittering mates.

Their Saturday night sets opened with an impressive turn by the London quartet Mumford & Sons, who evoked the swooning harmonies of CSNY with the dreamy pluck of the Incredible String Band and Mumford's contemporaries Fleet Foxes.

Flynn's more mannered, boy-next-door approach to writing and scoring initially seemed a bit antiquated and polite by comparison. But once he and his backing band settled into his thickets of sentences and quiver of instruments (guitar, banjo, trumpet, fiddle), Flynn drew ready comparisons to such precociously adept peers as Patrick Wolf and Beirut's Zach Condon.

Flynn's songs are deeply invested in traditional folk imagery, all rife with religious doubt, Hoagy Carmichael allusions and domestic ritual (he has a whole tune about cooking leftover bacon and sardines). But in a few moments, in songs such as "Brown Trout Blues," he gives away his age and insecurities, admitting, "Sometimes I find it hard to be a man / It's easier just to play the same old game / Of trying to forget my bloody name." Be it through boozy benders or an identity crisis, the results are an apt portrait of a youth navigating and avoiding the expectations placed on him.

The 18-year-old Marling, on the contrary, had such startlingly articulate insights into love and loss that one pities the scads of loutish teenage boys back in her native Eversley who surely tried and failed to stir her heart. She was a spectral presence onstage, but her songs were anything but wispy. "My Manic and I" is a claustrophobic scene of love amid mental illness that somehow manages to be both ravenously adolescent and coolly diagnostic: "He wants to die where nobody can see him / but the beauty of his death will carry on so / I don't believe him."

Marling's not the player Flynn is (few folks are), but she has a deft way around deceptively simple-sounding fingerpicking patterns that suggests plenty of nights mooning over her Bonnie "Prince" Billy vinyls. But it's Marling's implacable way of embodying the English-rose stereotype while completely undermining it with steely savvy that makes her such a potent singer.

"There's 14 of us traveling together, and I'm the only girl. Brilliant," she cracked between songs, to knowing laughs from her tour mates. One suspects those fellows are on their best behavior in the van, lest they earn a truly merciless song on her second album.

» www.latimes.com

In stage directions, the term a larum refers to a general chaos created offstage — perfectly fitting, then, that Royal Shakespearean Company actor Johnny Flynn snagged the phrase to encapsulate the swinging, thumping folk ruckus being kicked up on the 13 acoustic stomps contained here. Backed by the clatteringly exuberant, Pogues-like tradition-bashers of the Sussex Wit, the dashing young Brit often sings in the lingua franca of olde English balladry — there are funerals, priests, and sailors, for starters — but the presentation is thoroughly modern, having jostled up the hectic poetry with mad tumbles of drums, violins, and mandolins.

Much of A Larum's fire is drawn from the curious juxtaposition of Flynn's waggish wordplay and the seen-it-all, sonorous voice from which it comes a-streaming. "The Box" — with its jaunty chorus of "Sweep my mess away / Leave my body, leave my bones" — slyly slips the specter of death into a merry bounce of scraping fiddles and drunken trumpets. "Eyeless in Holloway" pulls off a similar coup, whisking away images of funeral pyres and disease amid a rousing rattle of martial drums, clanging banjo, and unison vocals. Breathing new life into centuries-old song forms, Flynn and his fellow rabble-rousers manage to sound like reverent folkies and punk-indebted street buskers at the same time.

JOHNNY FLYNN

Sun/28, 7:30 p.m., $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

» www.sfbg.com

» www.thisisfakediy.com

On the night of his first show in NYC, UK troubadour Johnny Flynn has scores of young ladies literally pressed up against the stage as soon as he and the Sussex Wit open with “The Box.” He of the crushing voice, boyish good looks, shredding melodies and vivid English town and country imagery is both nonplussed and giddy upon receiving such an immediate welcome, saying, “It’s quite a strange but amazing pleasure to be playing here… a big thrill.”

Flynn’s background as a Shakespearean actor may provide the focus needed to feign an air of detachment as he gazes into the rapt eyes of his new fans and sings the works off of his rich debut, A Larum, but between songs, he can’t contain his excitement at playing Bowery Ballroom (while on this U.S. tour with his friend Laura Marling) for the first time. Midway through the set, he mentions he’d first heard about the place in a Jeffrey Lewis song. Ah, sweet! Like Lewis, Flynn’s lyrics have a poetic storytelling appeal: detailed, concise, witty and mysterious, managing also an antiquated, dramatic flair that’s still grounded in the ways of the modern world.

“Leftovers” proves to be a crowd pleaser, with fans singing along to the seemingly Freegan lines “slip me some of them old sardines.” The innocent, simple life has never seemed so non-tragic and pure as when detailed by a performer such as Flynn. He and his band, The Sussex Wit, keep the set going at swift pace, filling out favorites such as “Cold Bread” and “Hong Kong Cemetary” with emotive cello, a cappella, added percussion, ramshackle brass and plucky mandolin and violin. Bittersweet stomper “Tickle Me Pink” is the perfect set closer, rousing enough to keep the crowd in an upswept mood even when it comes time to bid the multi-talented, captivating Flynn a fond adieu.–Madeline Virbasius-Walsh/Photos by Eileen Murphy

» www.sentimentalistmag.com

With Laura Marling covered in yesterday's post, let's now turn our attention to the other co-headliner of the "Fee Fi Fo Fum Tour" wrapping up at the Rivoli on October 4 - Johnny Flynn. The 25-year old, who just released his debut in A Larum, is either a Shakespearean actor with a musical side-gig or a musician who moonlights as a Shakespearean actor, but is a rare talent whichever way you look at it.

With his band The Sussex Wit and armed with mandolins, banjos, cellos and spoons, Flynn cuts a more traditional-sounding path than his musical peers, and as such is perhaps a little less accessible from the indie-pop world than, say, Noah & The Whale but in a world where The Decemberists can achieve as much as they have, it's hard to imagine Flynn and company will be discriminated against for their faithful approach to folk music.

On A Larum - a term from old English for "alarm" and used frequently in Shakespeare's stage directions, if you needed some context - the material veers from thoughtful, almost mournful ballads to more rollicking fare that wouldn't be out of place pouring out of an old English public house on a Saturday night. Tying them together is Flynn's strong, authoritative voice and densely poetic and evocative lyrics - early Dylan is a lofty but not inappropriate reference point. Though tourmate Marling is currently getting the bulk of the attention from media types, they and audiences will ignore Flynn at their peril.

WNYC and NPR are both offering up sessions with Flynn and his band while For The Records helpfully points out that he will also be playing an in-store at Criminal Records at 5PM on October 4, in advance of the Rivoli show. As mentioned yesterday, the Rivoli is mighty small so those of you who hesitate to get tickets, this may be your best bet to catch him.

» www.chromewaves.net

Until late last year, he earned his living as a stage actor. He aspires to write prose fiction and to make a documentary film about the music performed in South African townships of the 1950s and ’60s.

But for the moment, Johnny Flynn is a professional folk singer — arguably the most promising one to emerge at least since Idaho’s Josh Ritter started drawing comparisons to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen a couple years back. Flynn is more in the Nick Drake mold, draping his sharply observed, unabashedly literary lyrics in sensitive, autumnal melodies.

Reached by phone at his flat in London last month, the South African-born, U.K.-educated polymath was procrastinating rehearsing for the U.S. tour he kicked off in Massachusetts last Saturday — by recording demos for his next album.


"The first record was, in some sense, quite naïve," he says. "Now I’m much more able to imagine before going into the studio what I’d like to achieve, and record it myself a lot more."

But first things first. Flynn’s debut, "A Larum," has been out in the United States only since July, and he is scheduled to co-headline shows with Mercury Prize-nominated teenage singer-songwriter Laura Marling through the end of October. The double bill, dubbed the "Fee Fie Fo Fum Tour," arrives Thursday at the Birchmere in Alexandria.

"A Larum" revealed Flynn as the owner of both a voice that sounds several decades older than his 25 years and a gift for darkly hypnotic balladry. But what really sets these songs apart is their surprising and indelible arrangements.

On "A Larum," Flynn plays guitar, mandolin, violin, organ, accordion and even a trumpet to give the songs a sense of having been passed from generation to generation and adapted for whatever instruments are available at any given moment.

Part of that ancient quality comes from the way Flynn usually writes: verse first, music later — sometimes much later.

"It doesn’t really happen for me when I’m trying to sit down and find the words and the music at the same time," he says.

Verses appear in his mind when he’s on the go, and jots them down on whatever’s handy. If he never finds a melody to accompany his lyrics, it’s no problem: He publishes poetry, too.

Flynn claims that making records was "only half a thought before it actually happened."

In 2007, he was performing eight shows a week of "Twelfth Night" and "The Taming of the Shrew" with Propeller, an all-male British Shakespeare troupe. Music was relegated to "the odd Sunday," his only night off from the Bard. He was on tour with Propeller in New York when the call came from his U.S. label, Lost Highway records, the prestigious Nashville-based home to Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Van Morrison and Willie Nelson, among others.

While he appreciates the venerable company, Flynn’s own tastes run to electronica, vintage hip-hop (N.W.A. gets mentioned by name), Seattle indie-rockers Fleet Foxes and actress Scarlett Johansson’s recent disc of Tom Waits covers. He reveres the Cole Porter and Irving Berlin songs that his father, also an actor, played at home when Flynn was growing up, too. In other words, a mix of stuff unified only by the fact that none of it sounds anything at all like Johnny Flynn. Given his diverse talents and ambitions, the unpredictable playlist is more or less exactly what you’d expect.

If you go
Johnny Flynn, performing with Laura Marling
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: The Birchmere, Alexandria
Tickets: $20
More information: 703-549-7900; www.birchmere.com

» www.dcexaminer.com

Fans of the young and folksy contingent in music—which seems to be growing in numbers, like so many rolls of hay from a baler—will be content to fall asleep under a stack, sans horn, with the full-length debut from U.K. artist Johnny Flynn. Released in the U.S. in late July, A Larum is the latest from a community of music-makers from across the pond cutting albums in the British folk style. Happily, Flynn’s effort possesses qualities that make it more than a refashioning of the past—if the album is a romp through English town and country, which it is, it also points to a distant, sun-warmed field where you can lay down your head and meditate not only on what has befallen you, but on all that awaits you down the line.

This is something akin to the feeling that Flynn and his band, the Sussex Wit, provide on an album that is literarily mysterious, idyllic, and dramatic without seeming totally detached from the present and all its predicaments. The group creates a haven of promise hovered by experience with songs that pay tribute to written records of the loved and lost (and their combustibility), the armed ghosts of Hong Kong Cemetery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Cemetery) anthropomorphic portraits (“I’m a plough and you’re a furrow / I’m a fox and you’re a burrow”), the geometry of railroad shacks, Hattie Carroll, and the consciousness of being and shedding more than one person in a lifetime. With such a rich bed of imagery shoring up his first album, it is certain that future works from Flynn will prove him to be a great storyteller—an essential fact of the great performer-songwriter that isn’t entirely evident on A Larum. (While the poems in the songs come fast and furious, they don’t always amount to an emotional expression of innocence, tomfoolery, tragedy, and wisdom, as, say, a Tom Waits number does.)

Fully on display is Flynn’s musicianship. Many of the album’s fourteen tracks keep a tempo that is swift without seeming slight. From track to track, plucked and splayed strings, barroom choruses, spare harmonies, harmonica, horns, and percussion come together in arrangements that find the right conductor in Flynn, whose voice is just wayward enough to pull off the album’s roaming persona. Some of the songs stand alone, and even the ones that heavily remind you of the talents of others—Langhorne Slim (an American folk contemporary), Emma Tricca (a British folk contemporary), Ray Davies, early David Bowie, and a few Romantics and Victorians come to mind—are a pleasure to hear, because they are sung and played with the air of someone who is eager to learn from what others have done well.

Of the range of new folk albums coming out of the U.K. and the U.S., A Larum is one of the more promising, because Flynn and his band seem to be aiming for something more than a helping of obscure lyrics and antiqued sounds. If this album is any indication, they’re a generous group with room for growth. Haystack nappers everywhere rejoice.

Johnny Flynn is performing at the Bowery Ballroom on September 15.

» www.brooklynrail.org

» music.yahoo.com

On the phone from his home in London, folk-roots musician Johnny Flynn apologizes for his band, the Sussex Wit, "being noisy in the background."

"Isn't that what bands do?" I ask.

"They're really good at it, though," he says, laughing. As the group prepares for a U.S. tour that pulls into the Birchmere a week from today, Flynn and company are working on demos of new material, although their debut album, "A Larum," was released this summer in the United States.

"We've been playing the songs on the first album for quite a while," Flynn says, "so we're quite ready to find some new ones to play."

Flynn doesn't appear to take many breaks. A poet and prose writer, he has a Renaissance-man approach to work, crafting elaborately designed seven-inch vinyl singles that preceded the final U.K. release of his CD this year.

"If you're going to go for the actual object, the thing you can hold," he says, "it's quite exciting to go back to vinyl. You've got a bigger space to put artwork and poems and stuff. I wouldn't lose any opportunity to cram stuff in there."

Even as "A Larum" launched a hectic touring schedule, Flynn continued to compile short stories that may form a larger narrative. And he has begun to seek funding for a show that would combine live bands with an acting troupe in an interactive performance. He has toured England and traveled to the United States last year as part of the all-male Shakespearean troupe Propeller, which presents the Bard's works in traditional form, with men playing the women's parts.

Although Flynn says he plans to act again, the other projects will have to wait, as "A Larum" gathers attention for its organic, neo-folk style rich in acoustic arrangements that recall an Appalachian singalong and a rowdy night in a British pub. It was recorded "in a haven of recording equipment in the woods," he says, at the suburban Seattle studio of producer Ryan Hadlock, who has worked with the Strokes and Regina Spektor.

In fact, until you zero in on the lyrics, which might allude to dumpster diving ("Leftovers") or a British soccer star ("Wayne Rooney"), you could mistake Flynn's songs for obscure traditional tunes. He wouldn't mind a bit. He says he likes a song to feel "kind of ancient or have that sandblasted quality that feels like it's been part of a tradition or has been passed down and sung by a lot of people. If I've written a song and I think it's a good one, the feeling is usually that I found it."

Flynn originally performed as a solo musician but says he "didn't want it to be an out-and-out solo project with various session musicians' help. I wanted it be a group of people that would get to the state where we understand each other really well and had a lasting relationship onstage and off."

Although the record label ("annoyingly to me") chose to put the CD out under Flynn's name, he's quick to share credit. "I write the songs, but then it becomes a band in the way that any other band is."

Musical camaraderie also applies to the other acts on next week's bill. All three have toured together, and Flynn has high praise for his roadmates. Mumford and Sons are a spin-off from singer-songwriter Laura Marling, founded by her drummer and bass player.

"They make really joyous, beautiful songs with lush harmonies," Flynn says. As for Marling, her music is "just brilliant," he says. "She's become quite a star here. She's 18 years old. I played my first few gigs with her when she was just 16. She's got a stunning voice and this really still, amazing presence onstage. She's somebody that I tip for a lifelong career of greatness."

-- MARIANNE MEYER

The Birchmere is at 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20 and are available at http://www.ticketmaster.com or by calling 800-573-SEAT. Tickets can also be bought at the box office from 5 to 9 p.m. on show nights. For information, call 703-549-7500 or visit http://www.birchmere.com.

» www.washingtonpost.com

» www.democratandchronicle.com

Until recently, Flynn was acting in an all-male Shakespearean troupe called Propeller. He came with the group to New York last year for a run in Twelfth Night and Taming of the Shrew. Characters from Shakespeare's plays, such as Feste and Hamlet, have affected his songwriting. "There's always those kind of luminary figures that seem to speak the truth," he says. "The whole play seems to be around them in a way."

The name of Flynn's album even comes from Shakespeare's stage directions. He says that the word would appear every now and again as "alarum off," meaning that some commotion was happening just offstage. "I quite liked the idea that the noise happening offstage was this album," Flynn says.

Ideas for Flynn's songs don't just come from the distant past. "Hong Kong Cemetery" tells the story of Flynn visiting his grandfather's grave in Hong Kong. "The song's a kind of musing on what it was like for my father at the time of [my grandfather's] death and the sort of generational divide," Flynn says.

He says he was inspired to write the song "Shore to Shore" after reading about a tragic accident in the newspaper: A girl named Blessing had been hit by the same No. 12 bus in south London that Flynn himself once rode. Blessing's father also drove a bus on the No. 12 line, a few behind the one that killed his daughter.

"It was quite a shocking story to read about," Flynn says. "I was trying to work out how we're supposed to place tragedy like that in our heads and in our sense of how the world works in terms of our faith and compassion."

Henry David Thoreau's Walden inspired "The Box." "Thoreau's saying that somewhere along the line we've gone horribly wrong in collecting all this stuff," Flynn says. "It was really that whole thing set to a story basically in a song."

When Flynn comes to the U.S. for his tour this fall, he'll make a stop near Thoreau's old stomping ground in Concord, Mass. He just might stop by.

» www.npr.org

» www.houstonpress.com

Brown Trout Blues came out on 1st September. For Folk’s Sake caught up with the lovely Johnny Flynn only to find out he didn’t know a thing about its release.

FFS: Tell us a bit about Brown Trout Blues, where did the inspiration for the song come from?
Johnny Flynn: Well it’s loosely based around experience wanting somebody or something to be a certain way in a relationship and wondering how it could change. But then realising that that would defeat the point and that you can’t change someone they have to change themselves. The title is a thing that me and my dad had [Johnny’s dad was stage actor Eric Flynn, who died in 2002 - Ed]. We used to go trout fishing a lot and we caught a lot of rainbow trout, but we wanted to catch brown trout because they were quite rare so if we went out for a day and didn’t catch a one we’d say we had the Brown Trout Blues, so it’s kind of a joke that I called it that.

Brown Trout Blues is a really heartfelt song, do you ever find it difficult to recreate the emotion you felt when you wrote a song on stage or in the studio?
Yes it can be really hard I mean I guess that’s the skill, if you’re a good performer you can get to that state. When I’m playing with the band we all know what we have to do to get into the right mood before going on stage.

When we were doing our album our producer, Ryan Hadlock, was really keen to create the right atmosphere he even ran around lighting candles and stuff, it was funny. It’s really important, though. Especially in the studio if you do a take and it doesn’t have the energy or spark or whatever then you might have blown it cos you just can’t afford to do it again. There’s real time pressure and it can be a struggle.

It’s bizarre, sometimes I forget what I was writing them about because it’s such a precise emotion you’re only feeling it at the time when you’re writing and you’ve only felt it once, it can be hard.

Do you think the acting helps [Johnny was a stage actor before his music career took off]?

It’s the same thing but you’re not trying to fool anyone or be contrived about it. You just are, when you sing that song, you’re pondering that time when you felt that way. One of my acting teachers used to say that good acting isn’t acting at all it’s just reacting, you’re reacting to the text or the character or whatever.

How are you expecting the song to do commercially, does that stuff matter to you?

I don’t think it will do very well commercially but I don’t really care, I didn’t even know it was coming out because we did the video for it quite a while ago and we’re getting ready to go on tour [Johnny embarks on a US tour with Laura Marling on 13th September - Ed]

You and Laura are joint headlining, do you have a support act too?

Mumford and Sons are playing on the tour as well, most of them would have been there anyway because half of Mumford and Sons are in Laura’s band.

Your sister, Lillie, has been doing backing vocals and playing the flute in The Sussex Wit, will she be going to America?

Lillie isn’t coming to America, she’s an actress too and she’s got a couple of really important auditions coming up. She’s also singing with Noah and the Whale’s band [the parts originally recorded by Laura Marling - Ed].

So who will be doing her part?

No one really, we might ask Laura to sing on some things, we just kind of do without. Slightly different arrangements, we’ve done that quite a few times now, it is different.

You’ve been an actor, and now you’re in a band, did you ever consider doing anything other than being on stage?

I thought I’d be an English teacher for a while. But I was quite stuck really when it came to seeing the careers advisor, the only thing I could really think of to do was go to drama school. I got a couple of places at university to read English but I ended up going to drama school.

Now the music has taken over do you think you’ll ever go back to acting?

I’d like to go back to acting but you really need to have infinite period of time available to go up for auditions and then know that you’ll be free to do the job, so with having a band and having to go off on tour on short notice the two don’t really work that well together. I am trying to combine the two now in a show that will tour next year. We’re trying to put together a piece of theatre entwined within a series of gigs with our band and a few of the other artists we’ve mentioned, based around the morality plays. We’ve just done our first meeting about it.

It sounds like a big undertaking, is it difficult trying to get everyone together now you’re all doing so well in your careers?

There’s time if you make it. The show would be quite a big operation and a big project for our band we’d have to dedicate ourselves to it and rehearse. We’ve got tours until the end of the year so it’s quite hard to work out when you’ve got time to do stuff.

Apart from that, what are your plans for the future?

We’re demoing the next album at the moment. We’ve just got all the songs together and we’re literally right now in the process of rerecording a song that we did too slow.

What’s the new album like compared to A Larum?

It’s quite different, I feel like a different person to how I felt when I wrote the first one, with a different voice really.

On the first album some of the songs were quite old, some were from a couple of years ago, they were a mixture. They kind of worked together, they were very much of that time period, I wrote them over about a five-year period.

On this new one there’s one song that’s actually really old that I wrote about four years ago and I rewrote a bit of it and it seems quite relevant now. I left it out of the first album because I couldn’t really connect with it but I can feel it now.

Interview: Lynn Roberts

**For Folk's Sake is a new music website featuring interviews from Noah and the Whale, Jay Jay Pistolet, Slow Club and Mumford and Sons. Please visit
www.forfolkssake.com.

» www.forfolkssake.com

Singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn takes the title of his U.S. debut from a Middle English term. And this South African-born, Welsh-bred troubadour has also dabbled as a poet and a Shakespearean actor. He certainly brings plenty of old-world charm to A Larum, reviving the sounds of traditional English and Irish folk music. A multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, violin, trumpet, accordion, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, organ and percussion on the album, Flynn is just as adroit spinning stories with vivid characters and imagery. And his lilting cross provides just the right narrative tone for these tales that take a page out of Chaucer.

Download This: “The Wrote & Writ,” a lovely, literate ballad

» www.npr.org

HOMETOWN: London
ALBUM: A Larum

WHY HE’S WORTH WATCHING:
At 25, Johnny Flynn is already contemplating the benefits of death, but when he sings, “Pray for the people inside your head / They won’t be there when you’re dead” on “Tickle Me Pink,” there’s a bit of disappointment mixed with his relief. His debut A Larum – with its spry guitar, healthy sighs of accordion and fiddle, and rollicking drumlins – would be a lovely way to shuffle off this mortal coil, but here’s hoping he lingers for awhile.

FOR FANS OF:
Fionn Regan, John Fahey, The Chieftains

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH:
“Well, thank you for this honorable mention, Mr. Paste. It’s been quite a year and this has really capped it off, or, as we say here in Britain, ‘Put the turkey on the Christmas table.’ And what a turkey. What a Christmas table. You might think the two are synonymous, but without a turkey, a Christmas table is nothing. You have given me that turkey.”

Americans are so accustomed to thinking of folk and country as our own original art forms that we sometimes forget the truism that our folk genre is actually a direct product of the immigrant experience, with roots firmly planted in the British Isles. American folk singers are the artistic descendants of the British bard, a term which connotes in the imagination the lush pastoral fields of Great Britain and Ireland. There are story-songs that exist, in slightly modified form, on both sides of the Atlantic, and the British version of the traveling troubadour sings with a storyteller’s voice that has been adopted by American folk singers in every era.

Johnny Flynn, a young British singer-songwriter, is keenly aware of this relationship, and his training as a performer is steeped in the story-song tradition and practice on both sides of the pond. Originally inspired by that most famous of bards, Flynn acquired a Shakespearean actors’ training early on, and while performing as an actor in the United States, he began playing in New York with anti-folk performers like Jeffrey Lewis.

That career progression is key, because the music that Flynn produces sounds like an anti-folkie’s modern take on Chaucer’s meandering tales of Middle English knights and kitchen girls. Flynn opens his new LP A Larum (his debut recording in the United States) with a celebration of the life of a transient hobo, and then proceeds to barrel through 12 more songs full of wayward priests, foxes and burrows, orchards and wheelbarrows, bowling greens and livery boys, ghosts and funeral pyres. And while fans of the American nu-folk and freak folk scenes are thoroughly familiar by now with lyrical flights of fancy through rural countrysides and wooded forests, Flynn distinguishes himself by mostly steering clear of flighty whimsy and keeping his vocal performance grounded and earthy. The voice Flynn cultivates is not that of a wood sprite a la Joanna Newsom, but rather of a minstrel or town crier, roaming from village to village with his mandolin, spreading the news through song.

It certainly helps that Flynn possesses a singing voice uniquely suited to this minstrelry tone. Flynn sings in a wood-cured whiskey baritone that sounds at times as if the low, weary wail of Okkervil River’s Will Sheff suddenly acquired the sandpaper brogue of Billy Bragg. It also helps that Flynn’s band, the aptly named Sussex Wit, is especially adept at the rough-hewn and joyous music-making that gives the whole album the feel that it was recorded by a pub musicians’ jam circle. The best tunes of A Larum trot along, their guitar, mandolin, and banjo strums thumped by percussion and buzzing bass and brightened by fiddles and muted trumpets. It’s all thrown together with a raucous, loose-limbed aesthetic that, while surely quite premeditated, nevertheless sounds spontaneous and free. All of the highlights here— “The Box”, “Eyeless in Holloway”, “Tickle Me Pink”, and “Leftovers”—sound like instant barroom classics, with catchy rhythms driving boozy, yelled choruses.

Of course, it’s also nearly impossible to exist as a folk musician in this age without owing some kind of creative debt to Bob Dylan. Flynn isn’t shy about his homage to the U.S.’s own legendary bard’s pre-electrified era, fingerpicking his way around references to Hattie Carroll and tumbling, mumbling, overflowing lyrics on songs like “Shore to Shore” and “Tunnels”. The banjo and harmonica—two homegrown folk instruments that Americana did not import from Great Britain but rather sprung up from the merging of Scotch-Irish and African traditions that met in the Appalachians—also play prominent roles here, highlighting folk’s trajectory across the Atlantic. But the nice thing about A Larum is that rather than merely echoing Dylan’s American style, Flynn reminds us of its deep lineage, even further back than the Dust Bowl America that is the typical starting point for narrating Dylan’s stylistic journey. In this sense, the whole album also owes a bit of a debt to the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society British pastoral nostalgia.

A Larum’s first single, “Leftovers”, best exemplifies Flynn’s style of nostalgic British shanty-folk. The song celebrates a Dickensian lifestyle of living from scraps and throwaways. “Show me the way to the rubbish dump / Or the bins at closing time”, he sings over a fiddle line that teeters along drunkenly, “I’ve walked a mile just to catch a smile / From a fish without its brine”. Fishing for crusts and crumbs, the singer meets a girl named Mary May (what else could her name be, really?), who provides the vagrant’s archetypal love match, and the two live ever after in their happily grubby second-hand life. The song, like the album as a whole, rolls along so free-wheelingly that sometimes it seems to waver perilously on the edge of too-precious kitsch, but then manages to regain its balance and shuffles onward confidently.

A “larum” is the Middle English term for a town’s central warning bell, and so the album is even named after the town crier’s tool for spreading his word. It will be interesting to see if Flynn maintains this consistent vision and style in his future work, or if A Larum will be a free-standing tribute to Americana’s pastoral British roots, before Flynn launches off on another road. Either way, one hopes that this warm, loose album is just the start from this very promising musical journeyman.

» www.popmatters.com

» www.orlandosentinel.com

» www.rollingstone.com

Calling a Brit charming here in the States doesn’t really carry much weight. Tea is charming. The Union Jack is charming. Hell, even Hugh Grant’s post-Divine Brown mug shot was rather charming.

But South-Londoner Johnny Flynn’s debut A Larum, bubbling with Olde World magic and wit far beyond his 25 years, is so brimming with charm that even Lucky the Leprechaun would be jealous.

The subtle touches in the record’s musicality are delightful – a rolling rhythm section, banjos and ukuleles and the resounding antique Reso-Phonic guitar all provide the perfect backdrop for a Flynn’s startlingly inspired song-writing.

His lyricism varies from cerebral – referencing Thoreau on opening track “The Box,” to understated and observational: “The bartender looks like George Best/ Plenty of them do” on “Wayne Rooney.”

With the pure sincerity and the confidence of a master story-teller, Flynn gently guides the ebb and flow of the album with ease, from reflective and regretful songs (the gut-wrenching “Hong Kong Cemetery”) to pub-friendly classics (“Tickle Me Pink,” “Leftovers”).

Johnny Flynn’s enthusiastic blend of folk, blues and British charisma is timeless, and yes, charming. And not a hooker in sight. Brilliant!

» media.www.ecollegetimes.com

» www.bostonherald.com

Associated Press: A 25-year-old acoustic busker from England, Johnny Flynn foreshadows his intent with the odd title of his debut album, "A Larum," copped from an obscure 1602 play, "A Larum For London." An accomplished Shakespearean stage actor, Flynn brings a literary bent to his lyrics and a traditional English folk foundation to his sound.

But the charming singer-songwriter also bears a populist's heart, and his songs have a Dickensian tone that dispels materialism in favor of focusing on communal joy and shared ideals. Acoustic based, most of his songs carry a high-spirited energy and a playful sense of wordplay. His arrangements are reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen's "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" in the punchy way they add life to non-amplified music, but his lyrics and instrumentation own an old English sensibility similar to that of Ray Davies at their most pastoral.

Although steeped in folk music, there's nothing old-fashioned about Flynn's music. His catchiest tunes — "Tickle Me Pink,""Leftovers,""The Box" — feature a fresh point of view all his own. He's not as wholly formed yet with ballads — the American-styled "Brown Trout Blues" works better than the somber "Hong Kong Cemetry." But Flynn's humanity and unpretentious intelligence gives his music a rare and compelling appeal.

CHECK THIS OUT: "Tunnels" strips the sound down to Flynn's voice and unusually driving guitar style, showing how musical and uplifting his songs can be even at their most elemental.

The South Africa-born, Wales-bred balladeer debuts with an assured baker's dozen of broken-down Appalachian Irish literary-folk originals.

"Sometimes I find it hard to be a man; it's easier just to play that same old game / Of trying to forget my bloody name"   - "Eyeless in Holloway"

A melange of violin, accordion, mandolin and banjo dresses up these modest songs in their shabby Sunday best.

Flynn's prematurely aged voice makes him sound similar enough to Alexi Murdoch and other folkies new(ish) and old to keep you glancing down at your iPod.

» www.washingtonpost.com

The latest buzz star out of England isn't a sassy teen girl with a hit MySpace page or a neo-R&B singer who pines to be the next Amy Winehouse. It's a ye-olde-British-style folkie who uses a middle English term for his album title, writes of knaves and ladies, and happens to be 24.

It's hard to tell exactly what century Johnny Flynn is singing in when you spin his arresting U.S. debut, "A Larum." (He took the CD's title from a 16th-century term for a great ruckus). Flynn's voice has the dark and lilting cadences of a classic Celtic troubadour, and his lyrics flow with the alliterative ease of a romantic poet.

It's a well-traveled voice you'll hear in the first track, "The Box," a wise ode about letting go of everything unessential in life, inspired by Thoreau's nature poems. "Sweep my mess away/leave my body/leave my bones/leave my soul/leave me nothing I don't need at all," Flynn hums.

He's just as humble and fleet in "Leftovers," where he's content to dine on scraps and crumbs, making the most of the least. It's a perfect stance for a troubadour, but the character Flynn has adopted never seems dated or contrived.

The latter point is a concern, considering Flynn has as strong a background in acting as music.

Born in Johannesburg, Flynn comes from a family of thespians. His dad appeared regularly on "Dr. Who," and Flynn spent much of his teen life in Shakespearean plays in the U.K. Last year, he acted in two here at BAM. At the same time, he drew inspiration from "The Freewheel in' Bob Dylan" and from the N.Y. anti-folk movement of stars like Adam Green and Jeffrey Lewis.

Flynn's brand of neo-folk sounds nothing like those cracked American stars. The only U.S. references arrive in the strains of Appalachian music you'll hear in a cut like "Brown Trout Blues." You're more likely to hear hints of '60s British folk stars, like Bert Jansch (of Pentangle, for his fine guitar fingerings) and Richard Thompson (for his mordant wit).

That last element has much to do with the album's contemporary feel. Flynn's tone has a modern jauntiness, elaborated in off-kilter arrangements - like the cello that keeps scratching off key. Aiding him is an animated four-piece backup band, the Sussex Wit. Together, they make historic references sound as down to earth as they did in their day.

» www.nydailynews.com

Are American fans ready for a real renaissance man? Let’s hope so, because this U.S. debut by poet/actor/troubadour/multi-instrumentalist Flynn is a thing of sheer, raw beauty. With his sweetly gritty voice, bracing songcraft and taut acoustic musicianship, this 25-year-old exponent of England’s folk revival evokes British bards from Ray Davies and Richard Thompson to The Las’ Lee Mavers. Not every track is a gem, but A Larum gleams with precocious poise, passion and promise.

3 1/2 stars

Download: The Box, Shore to Shore, Cold Bread, Sally
Consider: The Wrote & the Writ, Wayne Rooney

» blogs.usatoday.com

» blogs.courant.com

Every so often comes a new voice so unique and assured that the level of talent is never in question: Norah Jones, The Strokes and Amy Winehouse come to mind. Add to that list 25-year-old British troubadour Johnny Flynn, whose baby face masks a truly old soul. His brand of energetic, traditional folk-rock predictably brings to mind the Waterboys and Proclaimers, but intricate nods to the Grateful Dead, Jethro Tull and Bob Dylan also permeate A Larum (Old English for ``alarm'').

Flynn -- whose pleasant, just-a-bloke vocals recall Ringo Starr's deliberate, slightly stiff delivery -- makes the mishmash of influences truly his own. He's first and foremost a storyteller, but he also happens to excel on guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, accordion and even trumpet.

On the stomping single The Box, Flynn convincingly evokes the life of a hobo with lines such as ''When you live in a box by the rails/You don't comb your hair, don't comb your tail'' and 'Sweep my mess away, leave my body, leave my bones/Leave me whole and leave my soul/Leave me nothin' I don't need at all.'' Listening to the jaunty, tavern sing-along Tickle Me Pink (``Pray for the people inside your head/For they won't be there when you're dead''), you half expect to see sailors merrily brawling. The stoned, slow-as-molasses folk of Brown Trout Blues is lifted by drawling country harmonies and muted trumpets -- it sounds like a spontaneous jam on a front porch.

But the loveliest moments are found in Shore To Shore, with Eleanor Rigby cello accents adding mournful weight to Flynn's confession: ``There lies a lady -- she's gone, she's gone/She'll be a fine lady before too long/But I hit her head and she finished her walking/She shouldn't be dead/She was too busy talking.''

Here's hoping newcomer Flynn has another decade of stories to tell.

Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Pod Picks: The Box, Tickle Me Pink, Shore To Shore.

» www.miamiherald.com

If you guessed that “a larum” just means “an alarm” (it’s Middle English), well done, but there’s no cause for concern with Johnny Flynn’s stateside debut. The 25-year-old Flynn plays acoustic folk-rock that would be at home during the ‘60s British Invasion or the 1600s; it’s a mix of English/Irish folk songs and classic American country, supplemented by his band—the Sussex Wit—and himself on guitar, violin and more. The musical talent alone would make A Larum an easy and perennial addition to any music library, but Flynn’s lyrical prowess is even stronger. A poet and a Shakespearean actor, his writing is sharp, witty and wise—if he doesn’t speak as epically as his fellow troubadour Conor Oberst, he’s much more accessible, singing of life, love and loss from a common-man viewpoint. Frankly, if there’s anyone alive today capable of creating folk songs so powerful, so musical and so wonderful they could last 400 years, it’s Johnny Flynn.

FOR FANS OF:

The Raconteurs – Consolers of the Lonely

Billy Bragg – Mr. Love & Justice

Mudcrutch – Mudcrutch

       - Free Download of  "The Box" until July 14th (USA Today's "Intriguing Track")

       - Participate in Amazon's Listening Party & Vote for Your Favorite Song

       - Pre-Order A Larum for only $8.99

Discover something new, share your opinion and don't forget to spread the word!

» www.losthighwayrecords.com

USA Today's Edna Gundersen highlights 10 "intriguing tracks" for your downloading consideration with Johnny Flynn’s “The Box” made the cut. Her description of the song makes us want to listen to the song over and over. You will too:

"a wistful yarn by the celebrated young Brit, who modernizes traditional folk without sacrificing melody."

Have a listen yourself via streaming tracks from Flynn’s page, check out the video for the song or better yet… swing by your favorite online music retailer and take Gundersen’s advice!

» blogs.usatoday.com

Proving you don’t need a Southern drawl and a Stetson to head down dusty American trails in Johnny Flynn, an impossibly talented young homegrown singer.

His music is steeped in country, blues, folk and bluegrass traditions but his lyrics reveal a distinctly English slant. You wouldn’t catch them performing a song called Wayne Rooney in the honkytonks of Texas. Johnny’s voice is engaging, ideal for the storytelling nature of his songs. His band, the Sussex Wit, bristle with energy, horns and cello adding warmth and depth. In a music world full of surprises, Johnny is ripping up the rulebook in style.

» www.pastemagazine.com

» www.inthenews.co.uk

» www.ilikemusic.com

Of all the boarding-school folkies who have been doing the rounds in London for the past few years, Johnny Flynn is the only one with any bite. The former choirboy and sometime actor’s debut album is a masterclass in pastoral British folk that pitches itself some way between Marty Cathy and Nick Drake, with a dash of Americana (but not too much). Riddled with banjos and fiddles, Flynn’s quietly confident songwriting veers between the breezy (“The Box”) and the funereal (“Hong Kong Cemetery”). All this, and he’s (Robson and) Jerome Flynn’s half-brother! Lovely stuff.

Pick of the Album: “Leftovers” : homelessness never sounded so sweet

» www.independent.co.uk