Fireside Stories

Fireside Stories is an album that could break your heart. First and foremost, it's astonishingly beautiful. With expertly finger-picked guitar, delicate vocal melodies and intimate lyrics, the record is a folk-blues masterpiece reminiscent of Bert Jansch, Davey Graham and Nick Drake. It's music that stops you in your tracks. The fact that it's by a singer-songwriter who died suddenly at the age of 33 – shortly after having a daughter and getting married – before his talent was ever fully appreciated only adds to the poignancy. It might be half-a-century late, but Trevor Beales is finally getting the recognition he deserves.

Fireside Stories is also a time capsule. Recorded in the attic bedroom where Beales slept as a child, the unearthed demo tapes paint a picture of West Yorkshire town Hebden Bridge in the 60s and 70s. At the time, it was a forgotten industrial town that a small group of musicians, artists and writers called home thanks to cheap accommodation, empty buildings, proximity to Leeds and Manchester, abundant magic mushrooms, and a difficult-to-define sense of otherness. Like the landscapes it captures, Fireside Stories is bleak yet beautiful, under-appreciated yet world-class, melancholy yet hopeful. This album deserves to sit among the greats.