Tag: Michelle Laverick

Originally from Teesside, but now living in Derbyshire’s Peak District, Laverick released her debut album in 2023, following up with the Selkie Child EP that drew comparisons with traditionalist folkie Bob Fox with her deep vocals likened to June Tabor (though you might hear Sandy Denny in there too), this is her latest EP and features her on acoustic guitar and harmonium with Ben Hayes on bass, electric guitar and percussion and Gillian Frame providing fiddle.

There’s just six tracks, but none are under five minutes with most nudging or exceeding six minutes. Musically, it’s steeped in the rich loam of English traditional folk with sparse arrangements and moody tones, opening with title track (which comes with a Marry Waterson video) named for the strong northeasterly wind (England’s only named wind) that blows down the slopes of Cross Fell in Cumbria and serving here as a metaphor for resilience and how we’re shaped by our environment, noting that the trees on the heights of the Peak “grow up, lying down/They learned to bend with the wind/So they could never be torn down”, extending the image to people learning to remain upright when battered by literal and metaphorical winds and the wisdom that “You don’t know how young you are until you get older” this brings.

Inspired by the fingerpicked playing of Lucy Farrell, ‘Birds That Do Fly’ is her only song on tenor guitar to date, and was sparked by a train journey from Scarborough to York after a Paul Weller open-air show and seeing a bird flying past. That developed into imagining what it would be like to be a bird “with a wild, wild glint in my eager eye”, but then it transforms into a sparsely shaped number about being a “creature of strange device” with “daemons in my head”, and, referencing Penelope from the Odyssey (“with no suitors at my door”), of doomed love (“I tried/To put some roots down/But my tubers they fell/On to stoniest of ground/maybe we could made a home if you had stuck/been around”).

Taking inspiration from the Teesside landscapes and evocative of Denny, ‘High Force’ was named for and written following a visit the magnificent waterfall in the Forest-in-Teesdale, in the heart of the Durham Dales, prompting vague and possibly false memories of having been there as a child, as such touching on both the fragility and resilience of nature , counterpointing the lines “We know blossom it doesn’t last long on the tree/It’s all too soon blown away by this wind…I see that the leaves are leaving/And soon there’ll be no more leaves left” with “for a hundred million years and more water has been plunging thru this gorge and it will keep on rolling on/When I am gone the river will roll on” and how memory endures (“although I am not here/I will keep you close; I will keep you so dear”), finally mutating into a cradle song (“outside the storms well they may be raging/Inside you are safe in your mother’s arms/We will gather you up…I will gather you up in a cradle of stars”).

Joined by Scottish singer Bex Fawn Johnstone on vocals, things turn traditional with Frame’s haunting fiddle anchoring a skeletal arrangement of ‘The Snow It Melts The Soonest’ with the slight reworking of the last verse and the addition of new one, sung by Johnstone from the woman’s point of view (“a woman’s heart grows colder when she’s bound by love’s sly lie/So mark me now, my fleeting love, your words won’t hold me fast/For the storm you thought would follow me is yours to face at last”) to balance the song’s misogynistic nature.

Just tipping past seven minutes, the longest track is the seasonal-themed ‘A Christmas Parting Song’ which, interlaced with assorted Teesside references (Nitram Tower, the Transporter Bridge), is pretty much about what, echoing Chris Rea, it says on the label and of “making our away back to where it all began/back to the towns we wanted to call home/back to the towns where we were born” and, by extension, both the memories we carry with us (“I’ve been making this journey/For most of my life”) and the inevitable letting go (“if you are not here/Would I ever return?… Now the time it has come/And I must be moving on/I was born to ramble/I was bound to roam/But never found a house to call home/In these final moments/That we have I will hold you in my arms… if this is our last goodbye…Please let me have one more farewell/And I be home….take me home…drive me home”).

It ends with the ‘bonus’ track, her take on ‘Oak And Ash And Thorn’, not traditional as such but adapted from Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘A Tree Song’ with its romanticised vision of old England, here Laverick interpreting it as both an environmental protest song and a commentary on those who seek to control our lives, rewording “mellow with ale” as “pissed-up with beer” and again adding some verses of her own about there being room in the forest for everyone (“when frost is set and the snow is wet/And the fire crackles ‘til morn,the strength you’ll find, in the branches intertwined/Will be if Oak, and Ash, and Thorn”. As folk music goes, this, like the title, is of gale force proportions.

Mike Davies

Artist’s website: www.michellelaverick.com

‘Oak And Ash And Thorn’ – live: