Tag: Georgia Shackleton

This year marks the 125^th anniversary of Sir Edward Shackleton setting sale to Antarctica with Captain Scott aboard the Discovery. In commemoration, his violinist and songwriter distant cousin has assembled an album that not only follows in his footsteps as it celebrates endurance (the name of a later ship) and the seas on which they sailed but which features the Shackleton Violin, crafted by luthier Steve Burnett from the floorboards of Shackleton’s former Edinburgh home, as well as the Il Mare Violin and the Orca Viola, themselves constructed from the same piece of driftwood. Composed during two residencies in Scotland, recorded both in the studio and on location aboard the RRS Discovery and coproduced by Shackleton, Sam Kelly and Aaren Bennett, who plays guitar on most of the numbers, it’s an inventive and wholly engaging work, featuring instrumentals and songs written by both Shackletons and Gerald Doorly and John Morrison who crewed the relief vessel The Morning when Discovery was trapped in the ice.

It opens with the exuberant self-penned title track instrumental, written and played on the woody-toned but punchy Shackleton violin with Nic Zuppardi on mandolin, followed by another original, ‘The Seahorse’, a celebration of the enchanting fragile but complex titular marine creatures, one of the natural world’s many small miracles, and inspired by Katherine Rundell’s praise of such in ‘The Golden Mole’. Again with mandolin and featuring Christina Alden on overlapping vocals, it’s built around circling pizzicato fiddle notes before it swells into bowed playing. Once more featuring the pulsingly plucked Shackleton, the sound broadening as it progresses, ‘Sea Legs’ was written as a reflection across time from Shackleton’s perspective as someone who could never escape the call of the sea, his restlessness always seeking to set sail again as soon as he returned to land. Coming to a closing stillness, the final verse (“There’s a lonely start that hovers gem like above the bay/In the darkening twilight/Together we’ll fade away”) is built around his last diary entry, written on the night he died during the Quest expedition.

Again featuring the Shackleton, with Bennett on tenor guitar and vocals, the frisky Gilbert & Sullivan styled ‘Engineer And The Doctorman’ was written by Sir Ernest and Morrison (whom he christened MacHinery) to a tune by Doorly, the lyrics inspired by the latter’s insistence that only engineers and doctors were truly essential professions and written to be sung as a duet with his fellow Scot Dr Davidson aka MacMush.

Nick Cooke on melodeon, the second instrumental, the lurchingly jaunty self-penned ‘Oystercatchers/ Down to the Rockpool’, stems from her observing the titular seabirds and her hours spent staring at the ecosytsems in the latter, here given more of a fiddle jig setting. Another Morrison/Doorley composition and with Cooke returning, the pizzicato fiddle and harmonium driven ‘Southward’ is a romantic reverie of returning to loved ones back home (“I wish my love were near me now when only the Gods can see”), that’s followed in turn by the third instrumental, ‘Elephant Island/Safe Harbour’ featuring the Il Mare and Orca along with Kelly on bouzouki, the first tune, recorded with the Shackleton aboard R.R.S Discovery, a drone inspired by the journey of the James Caird lifeboat when the Discovery was crushed by the ice and the second, a modal jig capturing the sense of relief and release on reaching safety.

Another from Morrison, who proves as adept a lyricist as he was an explorer, in tandem with his crew mates, ‘The Ice King’ was written a week after The Morning departed from the Discovery, ordered back to New Zealand to avoid it too becoming trapped (“Cut off from the world all alone/Held in the grip of the ice king/On the steps of his crystal throne”), returning to following spring, the lyrics set to a sparky tune that mirrors her vocal delivery.

Departing from the album’s Shackleton lens, the pizzicato rhythm ‘Band Of Mothers’ playing both the Shackleton and Orca violins, was inspired by the 2016 stranding of sperm whales on beaches along the east coast of England and, sung in the voice of a young whale, reflects their bond, their vulnerability and how “we’ve been boiled for oil and kept your lanterns lit/We’ve been smelted we’ve been melted”, hunted and harpooned. Their dignity undercut with their dying moments being “photographed for Instagram” by gawping crowds, it’s a lament for those who never returned to the deep.

Navigating a tidal drone, written for the eroding coastline of Norfolk, the ebb and flow ‘Happisburgh Tide’ is also an eco-themed number that weds its mournful violin with lyrics about climate change augmented by coastline field recordings of the sea and seabirds collected during her residency in Scotland. Also originating from her first residency and written looking at the bay from the fisherman’s cottage where she was staying, the nervy ‘East Neuk’, her first occasion of playing the Shackleton, is the final instrumental, Kelly again on bouzouki, its musical form, which includes a jig-like passage, reflecting the ever shifting tides and colours.

Adam Clark on banjo with Shackleton on plucked fiddle, it ends with ‘Footprints In The Snow, sung in the voice of the expedition’s dogs (“explorers on four legs with wet noses”) accompanying their masters and being canine companions in a world of ice and silence.

From the floorboards up, this is an outstanding work, and a musical expedition well worth embarking upon.

Mike Davies

Artist’s website: www.georgiashackleton.co.uk

‘Sea Legs’ – live: