This is music drawn from the marrow of where he lives, shaped by a mountain ballad tradition that uses folklore and lyric to carry the weight of real human experience; the kind of songwriting that has always known that the best way to tell a hard truth is to wrap it in something beautiful.

And beautiful it is.

Layered fingerpicking builds the foundation from the opening bars, atmospheric, sensitive, unhurried, conjuring images of an old pub, firelight, a room that goes quiet because someone has something worth saying.

This is the song word tradition in modern dress; community storytelling, wisdom passed down, a song that feels as though it has existed far longer than it actually has.

The lyric carries a mood of quiet despair from the outset, a sense of something lost, a piece of life gone missing, loneliness and regret sitting just beneath the surface. Yet the melody that carries all of this is, paradoxically, uplifting, and that tension is where ‘Exam Papers’ finds its superpower; the old folk trick, disguising trauma in a more upbeat musical skin, letting the listener arrive at the weight of the words in their own time. Celtic folk has always known how to do this, and it appears that Glad Town Ghost does too.

“Keep your dreams”, words that land like a quiet fist. Is this a parent speaking? An observer? A warning from someone who has already learned the lesson the hard way? The track is deliberately, cleverly open on that question, its rhetoric and reflection turning back on itself in that way the very best folk writing does; mirroring language, layering meaning, delivering something different on every listen.

The vocal sits at the centre of it, in parts with a deep, gravelled authority that has more than a little Johnny Cash about its edges. The backing vocals, beautifully gifted by Bee Davison, are barely there at all, a careful and thoughtful position, a veil rather than a presence, an echo that adds a beautiful sonic layer without ever crowding the lead.

Think Mumford and Sons at their most restrained, the quieter reaches of Bon Iver, even Bob Dylan at his most observational. There are echoes of all of them here, but Glad Town Ghost is not imitating any of them, simply operating the same traditions with his own very particular story to tell.

The final third opens things up, instrumentation and lightness building, something approaching joy threading through the melody before the track ends as abruptly as a door closing.

‘Exam Papers‘ is a track that rewards repeat listens, with layers that reveal themselves slowly, details you catch on the third or fourth pass that reframe everything that came before.

Glad Town Ghost is an artist very much worth your attention, with live performances very much on my list.

12th June 2026