Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...

Rachael Sage & The Sequins do not let “Canopy (Acoustic)” treat refuge as a soft-focus idea. Their third single ahead of "Under My Canopy" puts a social argument at the centre of an acoustic Americana-pop frame, centring radical inclusivity, non-violence and environmental consciousness. This alt-folk-pop single review considers a reworked song from Canopy that asks a pointed question: what does safety look like when division is...