Deepdale Podcast – 12 Albums for Christmas – Top Albums of the Year 2024 🎧

POMEGRANATE

India Electric Co

It’s full of really deeply layered, textured songs that require multiple listening, and you get more and more out of it the more you listen to it.  So well crafted.  They’re such good players and the album is a mix of really lush arrangements of fantastic indie folk pop songs … really, really good.

India Electric Co played a fabulous set at Deepdale Festival 2023.  So we’re really looking forward to having them back at Deepdale in September 2025 for a live music gig in the Brick Barn with support from Christina Alden & Alex Patterson.

Sample Track: Balancing Act

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THE PROMISE OF SPRING

George Boomsma

Every time I see George on a bill somewhere, I think we’re really gonna love seeing and listening to him, he’s so talented. He’s got a great voice. He’s a brilliant guitar player. His album is lovely and quirky because between each song you’ve got these little pieces of spoken word, acted out as if it’s his parents talking to him, and he’s in the jungle.

Sample Track: Cashmere Grey

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RESERVOIR

Brown Horse

There’s six of them, lots of instruments. Their songs are deeply layered. They are a very collegiate band, everything is written and credited as a whole band, so they are all inputting to each song. It’s one of the heaviest sounding albums on Chris’ list, Americana country rock. With a particular sound, uniquely sounding vocals and how that’s put together.

Sample Track: Stealing Horses

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THE SHACKLETON TRIO

The Shackleton Trio

Their 10 year anniversary album. Brilliant trio of musicians and so super talented, so modist with it, and so hard working. It’s a collection of new songs and re-recorded tracks that are no longer available. So they’ve re-recorded a few of their favourites to get them back out there. They tell such beautiful stories.

And if you are thinking of getting this, Chris would highly recommend vinyl, if there’s still some available, because the depth of sound on it is amazing. The production on the vinyl is really, really good.

The Shackleton Trio return to Deepdale in July 2025 for a live music gig in the Brick Barn with support from Adam Clark.

Sample Track: Frost Fair

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I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE EASIER

Annie Dressner

Annie’s album out this year is a really lovely album, pop folk album. Some brilliant hooks, brilliant riffs and some lovely lovely guitar stuff going on through it, really great. I love listening to it, it’s on the car rotation, and there’s loads of tracks on here that you get into more and more with repeated plays through the album. I love the slower stuff, but I also love tracks like 18 Years and Should’ve Seen It Coming.

Sample Track: 18 Years

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THE PENDULUM SWING

Katherine Priddy

Chris has really enjoyed Katherine’s work since first seeing her at Mosley Folk Festival, a while ago now. And we loved hosting Katherine at Deepdale Festival 2021, enjoying her career flourish since then, including performing on Later with Jools Holland on BBC 2.

A new album out this year is a further development in her sound and her songwriting. It’s very reflective, themed around leaving and and returning, leaving and coming back. The life of a touring musician. It’s a gorgeous collection of songs, for example First House On The Left about Katherine’s childhood family home, an anchor in your life and coming back to that from times away, a sanctuary. Really gorgeous.

Sample Track: A Boat On The River

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A TIME TO GROW

The Henry Girls

Gorgeous album by this Irish trio. We were blown away that they were happy to come over to Norfolk and play for us at Deepdale Festival 2024. Sheila and Chris have listened to their music over the last 10 years, and loved it so much. It’s been such a part of their life. Their festival set lived up to all of our expectations and wishes, it was brilliant.

Fusion of traditional and modern, Irish fplk music. Some beautiful songs pretty much all written by the girls. Just gorgeous album, really beautiful melodies and personal emotional lyrics. Them finding their themselves, their true selves, and expressing it in in song.

Sample Track: Winter’s Day

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WILLSON WILLIAMS

Kathryn Williams & Withered Hand

Brilliant album, and great to hear Kathryn in another guise, with Dan (aka Withered Hand). Kathryn is such a creative person and such a pusher of boundaries, while remaining uniquely her. She doesn’t sit in a groove and keep repeating it. She’s always out doing new stuff, looking for new collaborations, and looking for different ways to express herself. Many of the reviews of this album have said, it’s a sort of summer soundtrack album, because the songs have that feel, dreamy days sat on the beach listening, or in the car on the way to the seaside. There’s pop, there’s folk, and there’s a stonking great riff on Big Nothing, the last track on the album. Chris loves it so much.

It was wonderful to host Kathryn and Dan at Deepdale Festival 2024, and we hope it won’t be long before we welcome them back to Deepdale.

Sample Track: Sing Out

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OTHERNESS

Ferris & Sylvester

A really good second album. It’s a whole mix, indie, folk, blues, soul and rock, and it’s really surprising. But it’s great, really, really good. Two Deepdale connections, we think we saw them first supporting Wildwood Kin who headlined at Deepdale Festival 2022, and Lady Nade, who played at Deepdale Festival 2024, is backing vocals on a couple of tracks. There’s some great songwriting, great lyrics, really good voices, some great riffs on really good songs.

Sample Track: Don’t Fall In Love With Me

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AS IT EVER WAS, SO IT WILL BE AGAIN

The Decemberists

What a great band they are. They cross oceans with their music. They’re amazing live and their records are incredible. You’re driven by Collin Malloy’s songwriting and playing, and they’re all over the place with genres. Absolutely anything you can think of, they’re playing, from heavy rock all the way back down to sort of Music Hall style influences and everything in between. And they play the lightest of melodies over the darkest of lyrics, all poetry full of stories. Absolutely amazing. Chris loves the percussion that goes into their stuff. They’re artistically brave … This is a double album, and on the vinyl the fourth side is one song, Joan in the Garden, which is 20 minutes long. It’s brave, it’s brilliant and brave.

Sample Track: Long White Veil

DYSTOPIA BAZAAR

5 Hills Out

Chris only discovered this band in 2024, when they applied to play at Deepdale Festival. Sadly it didn’t work for this year, but we hope to host them at Deepdale sometime soon.

They are punk folk band, with heavy saxophones in there, as well as guitars, with some really great riffs. A great album with some protest songs, rocky heavy in places. Great riff that runs through the 3rd track on the album, Town End.

Sample Track: Bricks

THE RIDE

Hope & Social

Chris gets a bit emotional chatting about this album. This would be our album of the year if we had to choose one.

If you love music, and if you contemplate your life and what it means to you to have it, when it might get taken away from you by a complete fluke of nature, then you want to get this album. We had this band booked to come and play at Deepdale and they had to cancel, because of health matters, and the ride is effectively their comeback album from that situation. It is the most incredible piece of music and collection of songs that you’ll find. It’s full of the most emotional mix of joy, sadness, pain, and life force. It’s just incredible. You can’t listen to it without either being partly in tears, or laughing at the sheer inventiveness and lyrical quality, the way the band work together to put the music to back these lyrics. These stories are just amazing.

Sample Track: Sweetheart

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NEVER SO RED (EP)

Frankie Archer

We throw in this wonderful EP as a stocking present, to complete the 12 Albums for Christmas. This EP was in fact released in late 2023, and there is a new EP, Pressure & Persuasion, just released, from which the sample track comes.

This EP is a fusion of traditional folk with her love of electronic music, so there’s a lovely electro folk vibe running through what she does. Her stuff has a powerful corrective theme, dealing with outdated stereotypes and relating to the treatment of women through folk music, reworking how women are seen, treated and abused in lots of traditional folk. It’s powerful stuff, brilliant melodies and electronic staff effects.

We couldn’t quite make it work to bring her over to Deepdale for this year’s festival, so watch this space for future years if we can.

Sample Track: Elsie Marley