Unfamiliar name, with a quick scan of the contents of Fable suggesting nothing overly novel to be encountered, this was an immediate misstep. Female singers and the Gaelic songbook usually suggest one thing: clear and pure tones, bedded down with fiddles, flute and whistle, maybe a harp. I don’t know why, but it just seems the rules. But, from the start, Hamill seems to be at a defiant cross-purpose, wishing to challenge said orthodoxy, even when those fiddles, flutes and whistles are there.
Some background, and she has some, this not even being her first release, rather her third, following her first class honours degree at Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire, in Scottish Music. Whilst studying, she became part of Barluath, a Scots-Gaelic band of some traction, with a couple of releases. As a solo artist, her 2nd album, in 2021, Not Just Ship Land, became a Guardian Folk Album of the Month, which should have alerted more, or me, to her talent, if then maybe lost a little in the murk of Covid and lockdowns.
Here she provides a mix of her own songs and those from both Gaelic and Scots traditions, she singing in the three languages thus required, Gaelic, Scots and English. Sam Kelly, of Lost Boys fame, produces, with much of the accompaniment coming from Toby Shaer, himself one of those Lost Boys, as well as his work with fiddle champion, John McCusker. He plays fiddle, whistle, cittern, flute and more. Kelly adds guitar and bouzouki, some of the bass and synths, with keyboards from Alistair Iain Paterson. Most of the bass is added by Euan Burton, with the redoubtable Signy Jakobsdottir providing percussion. That’s quite a team.
The album opens in Gaelic, the traditional waulking song, ‘Ailean, Ailean, ‘S Fhad an Cadal’. But her voice, as prompted, is nothing like expectation. With her publicity suggesting her a cross between Heather Small (M People) and Julie Fowlis, with others finding hints of Adele in her cadence, I confess it is more the sultry smoke of a younger Mary Coughlan I could first hear. This is no bad thing, and allied to the tinkling piano arrangement, the mood is immediately more soul jazz than ceilidh. It works, the waulking rhythm still present, just filtered through new and building flavours.
Her own ‘Machir Bay’ follows and marries a jaunty near syncopated melody with a paean to a picnic on the Islay shoreline. Rhythm and braids, maybe? Again, it is keyboards that provide the main instrumental thrust, with deft bass and percussion, her voice stretching out, swooping confidently as the song progresses. Onward with ‘Dh’Eirich Mi Moch Madainn Chétein’, which, if more formally structured than the opener, by virtue her vocal timbre, it maintains the same sassy zest. Paterson’s piano pattern is broadly orthodox but invigorated by the rhythmic pulse, especially as he introduces an additional tune of his own, An Àirigh. There is whistle, from Shaer in this one, mirroring the piano line, but needing a keen ear to accommodate it.
‘Cumha An Eich-Uisge’ refers to a water-horse, a Gaelic aquatic shapeshifter or merman, almost, who has fathered a child with “brown-haired Morag”, now trying to lure her back, after she fled on discovering his true nature. This sees harmonium as the baseframe, as Hamill moans the refrain, a wash of synths adding additional textures to the soundscape. Fiddle makes a first appearance, fleetingly, in the wings. It makes for an impressively eerie 3 minutes, a similar mood seeping then into ‘The Angel’s Share’. This refers to the evaporation of drams from whisky casks, during maturation, alluding to a stratosphere becoming rich in droplets of the amber dew: “tears up here where it is high and cold.” A dreamy atmospheric inhabits this song also, with bouncy bass from Kelly, one of the two tracks he takes charge of the instrument.
Things then take a surprising turn for ‘Sinnerman/Phecaiche’, an initially sonorous translation/translocation of Nina Simone’s song of that name. Electric piano, guitars and spiky fiddle all then convene for a vibrant and bounding rendition, the fender rhodes of Paterson a joy in the middle eight. Faithful to Simone’s jazz-soul vibe, it has enough Highland in it to honour both the writer and Hamill’s birthright.
‘Leave Her Johnny’ is an old old song, and a song she sang with Barluath, if never recorded. With her voice pitched at the lower end of the register, and a rolling piano, the Adele comparison actually rings true, if with more interesting material. ‘The Cailleach’ explores another spirit legend of the far north, that harbinger of winter, bringing the cold, stripping trees of foliage, thereby culling the deer population. She, for of course she is a she, makes for a delectably prog-rock subject, something the arrangement seals, with a wrought gusto.
Puirt à beul is the traditional form of song native to Scotland, that sets Gaelic lyrics to instrumental tune melodies, ‘Beamer Puirt ‘offers a medley of several, and the cittern and guitar, beckoning in the first, come as quite a surprise, a flashback to a more usual presentation of this idiom. However, as it progresses, so too enter the less traditional elements, of slightly dissonant piano chords and Kelly back on bass. Picking up speed, Jakobdottir’s percussion rises in the mix, with fiddle, flute and whistle racing alongside. From that sweetly staid start, it has all become exuberantly exhilarating.
‘Ò Ho-Rò ‘Ille Dhuinn’ is the final Gaelic song and is of the highland regiments marching off to the Napoleonic wars, dreaming of home and the island of, in this case, Mull. Set to more wheezy harmonium, Hamill slows the marching beat to that of a lament, double tracked vocals, and resonant percussion adding to the sense of foreboding. Chemtrails of flute vie with synthesiser, making this undoubtedly a starkly etched highpoint of the album. So much so that ‘What Can a Young Lassie’, the Burns song that closes things, seems almost an afterthought, however warm, reekin’ and rich the delivery, accelerating to the close with a welter of strummed guitars and fiddle, Burton now the provider of gallantly effusive bass.
On this hearing, I feel duly chastised for my earlier ignorance of this artist. Don’t make my same mistake. As this review publishes, Hamill is set for a showcase album launch, 30th January 2025, at the Strathclyde Suite of Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall, as part of Celtic Connections, ahead of some English dates over February and March.
Seuras Og
Artist’s website: www.ainsleyhamill.com
‘Ó Ho-ró ’ille Dhuinn’ official video:
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