The Breath, featuring Stuart McCallum of Cinematic Orchestra and Ríoghanch Connolly of Honeyfeet (recently reviewed here), reveal their scenic video for Let The Cards Fall, the title track of their sophomore album set for on 14 September 2018 via Real World Records.
They released their debut, Carry Your Kin, in 2016 and in our Featured Review, Neil McFadyen declared that The Breath had achieved “a harmonious alliance between contrasting elements that rolls across the senses like clouds caress low hills – always moving, changing, evolving; and utterly fascinating.” Those terms could equally apply here in a song that is a wistful ode partly inspired by Queen Macha, of ancient Irish legend and the namesake of Armagh, Ríoghanch’s birthplace.
The label announcement reveals more about the theme:
Everyone needs a role model and Ríoghnach opts for Macha; who “rode on to the battlefield nine months pregnant, slaughtered all around her and then gave birth right there.” She can be maternal as well as murderous. Ríoghnach also invokes Suhail, a bright star on the southern horizon that becomes a protective deity, for ‘my brothers, caught in the crossfire’: ordinary people, vulnerable to the processes of history.
The song exemplifies the great clashing virtues of the pair. Ríoghnach, possessed of Celtic primitivism and visionary intimacy, Stuart, a guitarist of considerable tonal range, is ethereal and searching, never content to slip into conventional form and thrives in the gap between freedom and restraint. The picking pattern, he informs, derives from Villa-Lobos’ Etude No. 1. There’s a feeling of a lull before the storm, a respite that offers space for nurturing and healing.
Ríoghnach Connolly —singer, lyricist and flautist— is Armagh born and Manchester based. Known for her work with Afro Celt Sound System and Honeyfeet, she is he has a remarkable voice, a deep elegiac sensibility and a mischievous character. Stuart McCallum, by contrast, is a Mancunian urbanite, a guitarist who’s worked with Cinematic Orchestra and is given to dry understatement and calm confidence. Together, they have a remarkable connection that is at the heart of their very Manchester take on Alt-Folk.
Lyrics to Let The Cards Fall:
time lets its keepers to stay
some mothers battle their way
kept a run away hate
suhail my old friend won’t you rest a day
though you walk the ill-trodden path
strong brother, strong brother won’t you wait
pieces lost with the ills of the world
long gone, easy late
timeless as the day where earths are made
though you walk the ill-trodden path
though you shy the ill-gotten way
though you forge the long road ahead
let the cards fall where they may
though you seek the ill-gotten truth
though you shake the ill-gotten turn
though you walk the long forgotten path
loyalty Lochlainn
The Breath’s second album, Let The Cards Fall, will be released on 14 September on Real World Records.
TOUR DATES
15 July BUXTON Buxton International Festival
4 Oct HULL University of Hull
9 Oct CARDIFF Acapela Studios
30 Oct NORWICH Norwich Arts Centre
31 Oct LONDON the Nest Collective at the Old Queens Head
1 Nov BRISTOL Trinity Centre
8 Nov BRIGHTON Komedia
9 Nov NOTTINGHAM Metronome
13 Nov MANCHESTER The Deaf Institute