Comprising Bec Garthwaite, Beth Roberts and Claire Vine, based in Bristol Quiet Light is their third album and the first as an official psychfolk trio, the songs reflecting their individual struggles over recent years with themes of burnout and recovery, sorrow, acceptance, solitude and friendship. Musically varying between shimmering strings, fingerpicked acoustic and reverb electric guitars, and heavy double bass with several numbers wholly vocal, it’s often a very experimental affair, two tracks being improvisations, the unaccompanied wordless ululating ‘Lament For Palestine’ and, likewise, the title track album closer with its vaguely monastic feel.
It opens with the Roberts’ pizzicato banjo ‘Evergreen’, a song penned while recovering from a breakdown and a paradoxical renewed appetite for both joy and solitude (“Am I better off alone?/I can’t let you share this home”), part inspired by ‘The Prophet’ with their voices both in harmony and overlapping, accompanied by strings and harmonium as, quoting Gibran, they sing “When sorrow has carved your cup/Let the joyful rain fill it full up”.
There’s more fingerpicked guitar on the steadily urgent fey folk of ‘Making Space’ (“White threads linger at the edge of the horizon/Drawn by ghost hands/Crow caws overhead telling of some omen…Ample time to linger in the moonshine/Play little one play/This world is ours, ours make /Overlapping motions create our own face”), leaning into the watery banjo ripples and strings of ‘Dearie’ with its sketching of a relationship under mental health strain (“When I am near you I want to feel your skin/But in this moment you cannot let me near/I want to know you, to hold you so near/But I must leave now, you’re hurting me”).
Sung a cappella, they describe ‘Aquamarine’ as a “choral psychedelic hymn”, capturing the otherworldly feel of floating on crystalline waters removed from everyday demands and responsibilities, their voices interweaving and coming together in a kaleidoscope of almost medieval folk and jazz. Vine’s voice the guiding light, again drawing on jazz vocal patterns against pizzicato strings and minimal electric guitar, ‘Pieces Of Me’ was inspired by her burnout and trauma experiences (“Stretched to the point of snapping/I am not elastic …Too many, too much, too few/Pieces of me… The ocean it stretches before me/I wish I could float away to edge of all things”).
Vine’s clarinet weaves through the lyrically enigmatic, delicately sung fine-minute plus ‘Which Waters’ (“I will make you a map/Ink of the moon like tree sap…See these hips/Silent mystery/Trace fingertips across history…I will show you my shame/Whatever its shape/How cruel its name/I’ll let it escape/So we can know which waters are rising”), leading into the connected aquatic imagery of the unaccompanied ‘Boat Song’ with its theme of both bright and dark anticipation and expectations (“What will your boat bring coming into harbour/What will your boat bring coming into land…Mine brings the song of sorrow/Storms are brothers didn’t understand/And deprived them of tomorrow… Mine brings the song of a silver sea/Sweeter than any beating heart could stand”).
Also a capella with lead vocal and wordless scat “Oh oh oh oh aha oh oh oh” backing, ‘Lullaby for a Friend’ again speaks of mental health concerns (“Hello friend, are you there?/
We haven’t seen the light in your eyes for a few days…Staring at the ceiling like you are not seeing us being here”) and support (“Find courage in finding strength/Bravery takes many forms…We are here for you/If you need us”). The lens turns more introspective on Garthwaite’s self-questioning ‘Picturing Myself’, examining her sense of identity, place in the world and mortality (“I am picturing myself fragmented yet whole/I am a jigsaw a puzzle of sorts/I gave you a piece/Are we just borrowing borrowed time till the leaves fall”).
The final song as such is ‘Half Moon Horizon’, as dreamy and otherworldly as its title suggests, their siren-like voices conjuring mystical poetic images of the natural world (“Sand folk gather/Forage tendrils of intrigue/A lullaby/Jupiter and sky cradled/Hill hound calls/Echo through trembling tree tops/Sea replies/Intwined, implicit, untold”), a song of endurance, recovery and hope that embodies the album’s spiritual inner core. One to spend time with in quiet contemplation and let their charms bewitch.
Mike Davies
Artists’ website: www.facebook.com/handsoftheheron/
‘Pieces Of Me’ – official video:
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