Julie Fowlis

It’s an unfair generalisation of music that’s sung in a different language that it’s usually labelled as “world music”. As if music sung in English is “actual” music and all the rest is some kind of subgenre, or an offshoot of it. It’s kind of disgusting and also pretty much meaningless, as Scottish folk singer Julie Fowlis so exquisitely goes to show. She’s Scottish born and Scottish bred and yet most of her songs are written and sung in Gaelic. It might be a different tongue but it makes it far more “English” than any bunch of guitar toting chancers from Wandsworth singing about the high school they never went to. It’s also far better than that, deserving of as much mainstream success as it can possibly get, and the way you can see just how deserving she is through her live show. Her voice is delectable, as pure as freshly laid snow but as expressive as any other singer of her generation. However to see her play the dizzying number of instruments she’s mastered, from the Cor Anglais to the Accordion and everything in between, is just as stirring a sight. The songs barely need mentioning, they’re spellbinding whether you know what she’s saying or not. In all she may sound like a cult artist through and through but truthfully, she’s an artist that any casual fan of folk music from Joni Mitchell to Mumford and Sons could easily fall in love with. Highly recommended.