So many folk songs are about moments of metamorphosis between worlds or identities, full of peculiar magic and possibility. Composer and novelist Kerry Andrew’s third album as You Are Wolf is a joyful celebration of those transformative experiences, inspired by their recent experiences of debilitating chronic illness and coming into their non-binary identity.
This potential is conveyed in accessible, blissfully pretty arrangements, despite Andrew’s commitment to experimentation crackling around the edges. On the opening Reynardine, the popular ballad about a woman charmed by a werefox, Andrew’s glossy voice, set against simple, plucked strings, sounds charmingly radio-friendly, before the phrases slow (the fox’s “teeth did brightly shine”) and distortion grows. A trick has been played on the listener, the track cosying up before revealing something more surprising.
It sets the album’s outlook. Within the kalimba-propelled sweetness of Hare Song 1 are the lyrics: “you will find me at the edge of breath / You will find me at the heart of fire, shaking off death.” Whirling around a playful prepared piano loop and pivoting between images of coercion and consent, the traditional Twa Magicians is no longer about a woman having to shapeshift to escape a male stalker, but one about two women switching states – one a griddle, the other a cake, then one a moorland, the other the heather growing on it.
Great samples abound, too, including the Irish Traditional Music Archive’s 1969 recording of six girls singing an eerie playground rhyme, and birdsong on The Trees in the Wood, a duet with Ben See about life developing within nature. With Sam Lee also contributing vocals and Robert Macfarlane providing lyrics (on Blue Men, alongside a drone from Andrew’s radiator, no less), an album emerges bursting with crossover potential as well as mercurial spirit.
Also out this month
A 1978 private press recording reissued with the artist’s writings, drawings and dedications from friends, Dorothy Carter’s Waillee Waillee (Palto Flats) is one of the most astonishing reissues of the year, mixing originals and traditionals brought alive by shuddering zithers and psalteries. Another gorgeous exercise in instrumental beauty is Ragnhild Knudsen and Pauliina Syrjälä’s Norwegian/Finnish collaboration Talende Strenger/Kertovat Kielet (Taragot Sounds), which translates as Talking Strings. Syrjälä’s kantele (a kind of Baltic box zither) meshes gorgeously with Knudsen’s bowed Hardanger fiddle, creating a sound that feels peculiarly festive. Other seasonal delights can be found in Bryony Griffith and Alice Jones’s Wesselbobs, a collection of West Yorkshire winter songs named after a decorated evergreen carried by local wassailers. Broadside ballads, local poems and dances are delivered by the pair as warmly as jugs of mulled wine.
