Today marks the release of London-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Olivia Chaney's debut album, The Longest River, on Nonesuch Records. Chaney co-produced the album at the legendary RAK Studios in London with Leo Abrahams (guitarist, film composer, and Brian Eno collaborator). The record was engineered by esteemed veteran Jerry Boys (Buena Vista Social Club, Sandy Denny) and includes Chaney’s longtime collaborators, musicians Oliver Coates, Jordan Hunt, and Leo Taylor. To pick up a copy of The Longest River, head to your local music shop, iTunes, Amazon, or the Nonesuch Store, where CD orders include a download of the complete album at checkout and the HD digital album is also available to purchase there.

Chaney is a guest on BBC Radio 3's In Tune this afternoon, performing songs from the new album. Tune in at 4:30 pm London time or listen again at afterward at bbc.co.uk. Chaney will tour the UK with music from the new album next month and heads to North America to tour in June. For detail, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.

The New York Times said of a performance during a brief tour last month, "Whether she’s singing old songs or her own, Ms. Chaney destabilizes them, turning them into rhapsodic, immediate dramas, giving listeners a reason to hang on every phrase and inflection … Her voice holds the purity, tension, dignity and sorrow of a heritage full of songs about lost love and cruel fate. Ms. Chaney is thoroughly grounded in the past, from medieval music to [Joni] Mitchell. But in her quiet way, she’s radical."

The Sunday Times of London writes: "Anything but a conventional folk singer, Chaney is a home-grown poet whose lyrics, dense and allusive, blend pastoral tradition with singer-songwriter sophistication. A mesmerising debut."

The Longest River earns a perfect five stars from fRoots, which calls it "a very fine debut album," and four stars from the Observer, MOJO, and the Irish Times.

"The coming force of Brit folk, Chaney’s long awaited debut album is a surprisingly stark yet passionate affair," says MOJO of The Longest River. The Observer, in its four-star review, calls it "an enchanting, stately creation."

"Her debut album is a beautiful job of work, a record where all that early potential flourishes and blossoms on a sweep of tender, graceful tunes," writes the Irish Times's Jim Carroll in his four-star review. "Chaney displays savvy, strong vocal poise throughout. What’s clear is that her approach to the music of the past is full of zest and vigour and she’s a performer well capable of adding radical touches to such material. A hugely rewarding listen."

The Arts Desk exclaims: "Chaney’s voice has a remarkable clarity and purity, a lyrical and emotional strength that puts her up among the best—of her generation or those who came before. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s here to stay—and it’s shaping up to be one of the English folk albums of the year."

"The Longest River sounds like it wasn't written to impress anyone," says Exclaim in Canada, "but impress it does."

"In an era where the term 'folk' has come to mean 'anything with banjo,' London songstress Olivia Chaney pops up to remind us there is so much more that belongs under that broad, ambiguous umbrella," writes Rolling Stone Australia. "The Longest River delivers aching old-world balladry, weaving tunes of impossible delicacy into tales of heartbreak from another time and place."

On The Longest River, Chaney balances her original compositions—including the two pieces that first brought her acclaim, "The King’s Horses" and "Swimming in the Longest River"—with a selection of covers that she has newly arranged and that illustrate the broad sweep of her taste: "Blessed Instant" by Norwegian jazz singer-composer Sidsel Endresen; an adaptation of 17th-century Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s "There’s Not a Swain"; 20th-century Chilean folk composer Violetta Parra’s "La Jardinera"; and "Waxwing," from Scottish avant-folk singer-songwriter Alasdair Roberts.

Chaney graduated from the Royal Academy of Music and learned the guitar from her father’s renditions of Bob Dylan, Fairport Convention, and Bert Jansch, among others. Since then she has built a loyal and growing following, both in the UK and internationally, through her acclaimed live performances, as a solo artist and also in collaboration with a diverse range of artists, including Alasdair Roberts, Zero 7, and The Labèque Sisters. In February 2013, she self-released her eponymous debut EP, which found her further fans with media and public alike, leading BBC Music to write "it confirms Chaney’s arrival as a major talent."

"It’s taken a long time to get to the point where I wanted to make a full record, and I’m lucky Nonesuch heard me at the right time," says Chaney. "I wanted it to have a transparency and intimacy, even if in a voyeuristic way," she explains. "I also wanted to pick up the atmosphere of the room I recorded in … almost tangibly feel the mood of the song and the performance."