Warm sounds work as well as any blanket on the coldest nights. They trick me and coax me into believing I’m somewhere cosier, somewhere better than wherever I actually lay. The Paper Shades make just-so music. Comforting, late-night tale music. Sarah Dollar’s voice is pure, and her harmonies with Jon Rixon are precisely those warm sounds of which I speak. To listen to their EP, ‘Where You Lay’, is to submerge yourself into a quilt you’ve never felt in front of a flickering fireplace in some cottage on the heath.

It’s easy to project tired old clichés and simpering sentiment over the music that affects you most, but it’s far harder to find music of that calibre – and even harder still to make it. I was lucky, then, to have Sarah and Jon approach me sometime last year. They were looking to play some gigs in London, and I was looking to book some. Before long I had them booked for two gigs in as many days, and the rest is history.

Well, for me it is. But what about the rest of the world? The people who haven’t heard of The Paper Shades, or their fantastic music? For that matter, what about all the other bands I’m treated to daily as an intrinsic part of my role within Folkroom Records? Perhaps someday I shall take to a rooftop somewhere in the city and shout out bandnames and corresponding Soundcloud links through a megaphone. But I’m afraid of being arrested, and there would probably be a great deal of stairs involved at some point. And it might be chilly. I don’t want to be chilly. So probably I won’t.

And this brings us here. After all, ours is a rooftop that can reach the discerning audience – the people who listen to the music we’re shouting about. We’re only a small label, and our resources don’t (yet) allow for us to release every decent song we ever hear. But we can still shout about that which we love. And that’ll be the aim of our onsite blog. To celebrate our favourite people. Signed or unsigned, folk or not-particularly folk. We’ll celebrate what we love most, and hope that in doing so a few more bands can sell a few more records.

So let’s start with The Paper Shades.

Where You Lay is a perfect example of the sort of music we want to celebrate here. Take, for instance, the title track. Warm sounds. I said it earlier, and it remains the truth. Warm sounds for a cold country. It has echoes of Emily Barker’s opening credits for the BBC’s drama Wallander. Like that song, ‘Where You Lay’ is a theme song of sorts. One that imbues a strange and uncertain hope upon dark circumstance.

Elsewhere the songs continue those cosy, embracing tones despite mixed sentiments. The opening track is a love song, yes. But a love song for an absentee. Other songs speak of destructive people, or those who have you re-evaluate your own position. But if one thing remains consistent throughout, it’s that of which I have spoken from the start. Warm sounds.

Buy The Paper Shades’ ‘Where You Lay’ EP