We’ve got beautifully crafted folk tracks today. A London multi-instrumentalist who made percussion from household objects, a Florida songwriter finding parallels between human migration and ducks, and a Sydney artist making self-deprecating folk-pop about never getting anything right.
James Garland – It’s love
James Garland’s ‘It’s love’ is intimate, handmade folk-pop with the evocative fingerprints of household objects
It’s love was written to celebrate a four-year relationship, and London-based James Garland performs every instrument himself, including unconventional percussion built from tapping household objects and manipulating paper, all captured in the home he shares with his girlfriend. Vocal harmonies and instrumental textures layer into a rich sonic landscape that feels handmade in the best possible way, and the fact that you can hear the room in the recording is a feature, not a flaw.
Garland is a conservatoire graduate who started with jazz trumpet, met his partner while studying music in Cardiff, and currently lives with an opera singer, which probably explains some of the harmonic confidence underneath the song. It’s love is his first release featuring his own lyrics, and it shows beautifully, with a lyric that trusts the listener enough to stay specific rather than chasing a universal line at the cost of the actual story, which is harder than it sounds. It’s cute, compelling and we love it.
Liz Nash – Ducks Fly to Florida
Liz Nash’s Ducks Fly to Florida is warm, witty folk-pop from Florida’s most charming music chronicler, pulling migration and community into one neat parallel.
Ducks Fly to Florida is the third installment in Liz Nash’s Florida Songs collection, slice-of-life songs from her small hometown of Mount Dora, and this one finds a beautiful parallel between human migration to warmer climates and the seasonal movements of ducks. It produced beautifully, and wrapped in laid-back acoustic warmth with a Beach Boys backing vocal feel. The arrangement unfolds carefully and the vocal is just really, really lovely.
Nash’s first Florida Song, Nana and the Gator, inspired a student-led art project exploring swampland culture and community care, which is a genuine cultural footprint for music this deliberately unpretentious. The third installment keeps the tone conversational and the hooks easy, the kind of writing that makes a small town feel universally recognisable, and suggests the collection could keep running for a while yet without ever running out of small-town ground to cover and Sunday-morning details to notice. I love this.
Michelle Sutton – electric toothbrush
Michelle Sutton’s electric toothbrush is sincere, self-deprecating folk-pop about trying your hardest and still getting it wrong, and it is deeply, painfully relatable.
electric toothbrush is a folk-pop song about feeling like you cannot do anything right no matter how hard you try, and Michelle Sutton delivers it with the kind of self-deprecating warmth that makes you want to give her a hug and also laugh out loud. The specificity of the writing is what sells it, small domestic details that open out into something bigger, and a stunning vocal performance that sits halfway between confessional and stand-up.
Sutton is Sydney-based on Wangal Land, has been releasing music independently since 2020, and previously dropped the defiantly joyful Jesus Loves Fat Girls Too, which gives a decent sense of her range. If Camp Cope’s emotional directness and Maisie Peters’ wry pop-literate songwriting are both on your playlist, this one is absolutely for you, and the track rewards repeat listens as the jokes layer and the real sadness quietly sharpens underneath the melody and the laughs. It’s a beautiful track, we’d love to hear more.