Each year, in this little community of ours that contentedly nestles to one side of mainstream, it seems a handful of albums are released that attract our attention not simply because they are wonderfully musical (albeit they inevitably are), but because they present a bigger story; a story that for whatever the reason, has the ability to fascinate us.
Kitty Macfarlane’s ‘Namer Of Clouds’ is an album that falls firmly into this category. Seeming to have attracted as much initial attention from outside the folk genre as from within, ‘Namer Of Clouds’ is an undoubtedly remarkable debut album. Defined by intriguing song writing and innovative production, Folk Radio’s Thomas Blake described the record as “a debut full of old wisdom and bubbling over with new ideas” (Read the full Album Review here).
At the heart of the album is Macfarlane’s passion for exploring the natural world around her, a world that she finds “endlessly inspiring.”
“I really like songs that are not merely about personal experience but about the bigger picture” Kitty explains as we chat about her influences, “I love people who draw on inspiration from around them as opposed to maybe just a personal journey. I think I’ve always thought like ‘the song’ is the main thing for me and I’ve just got to get my singing and my guitar good enough to present the song. I don’t know…maybe everyone thinks that?”
It’s perhaps unsurprising that with Kitty’s strong belief in the story or message behind her songs, her creative process starts with finding a core concept.
“I never just sit down and just start jamming or making sounds” she explains, “I’ve spoken to quite a few songwriters who come up with a melody first, and then they fit vowel sounds around the shapes of the melodies. That’s definitely not how I do it. I come up with what I want the song to be about. Then certain phrases will start to fall together. I’ve got a songbook full of ideas; it’s got tonnes of phrases that are just jumbled and don’t go together. I’ll just go through it and suddenly be like ‘Ah that thing I wrote three years ago fits in with this one’.
“For me though, songs have to just fall out naturally. I can’t be like ‘Right, I’m going to write a song today’, I have to be in exactly the right mood…the inspiration has to be there. I can’t contrive it, that’s not worked for me in the past.”
While some of the songs on ‘Namer Of Clouds’ come from live material Kitty had been performing previously, as many of the tracks were brand new when she started the recording process in April this year. The relatively short lead time from recording to release was a conscious decision with the intent of creating something that sounded fresh and spontaneous. Kitty’s collaborators were key to the success of the approach.
“Sam Kelly was there from the beginning, from the brainstorming process and really just got everything that I wanted. He’s got a real knack for hearing what a song needs and not overdoing it but doing just the right thing at just the right point. For a couple of the songs that weren’t fully formed, he really brought out the identity of the song by coming up with something that pulled it all together. The other person who was really involved but in shorter bursts was Jacob Stoney from London. He’s an amazing keyboard player, and he’s a bit of a production wizard as well; he has really innovative and ingenious ideas. So those two co-produced the album, but I was heavily involved with the whole thing as well.”
A notable feature of ‘Namer Of Clouds’ is the use of found sounds, or field recordings, throughout the record. Kitty explained how it was important to her that the album wasn’t just about her vocals, she wanted to give a voice to the places, people and stories involved in each of the songs. This involved, for example, going down to the Somerset levels at 5 am to record bird sounds or in the case of ‘Sea Silk’, travelling with Sam to Sardinia to interview the lady whose voice can be heard at the start and the end of the song.
This organic approach to making the album continued with the recording of instrumentation. “For ‘Starling Song’” Kitty explains, “we brought in the amazing Jamie Francis. I asked him to put down his banjo for once and turn to electric guitar. He’s an amazing guitarist…guitar is actually his first instrument. He did all this amazing spacey, bubbly, weird electric guitar stuff over the top and we threw in some rumbly percussion as well with Josh Clark who was doing the mixing, he’s an amazing percussionist. Some of those things felt really spontaneous, but at the same time, it felt quite preordained in the way it all came together. Maybe I’m looking back with rose-tinted glasses, but it felt like a really special process…”
Upon release, the album immediately attracted positive reviews. “It’s a bit of a funny one” Kitty reflects, “because when you make something like that, it’s literally just for you; it’s your own project and everything on it were just things I wanted to do. It was never tailor-made to any specific audience. But then as soon as you’ve recorded it and released it, suddenly it stops being yours any more and it’s now everyone else’s unique listening experience. That’s quite liberating in a way because you hear, not necessarily just reviewers, but individual people in the audience…their own responses to the songs. It’s lovely when they read other things into it, or they get what you were writing at the time.”
The story behind the title track of the album exposed Kitty to an audience she hadn’t expected. When someone forwarded the track, written about the scientist Luke Howard who invented our current nomenclature for clouds, to the Cloud Appreciation Society based in Somerset, they mentioned it in their newsletter. This brought Kitty’s music to the attention of the society’s forty thousand members. “I started getting all these nice emails” she laughs, “that were just the loveliest types of emails because they didn’t want anything; they were just people who wanted to tell me how much they like clouds as well!”
When sitting chatting with Kitty, she displays a notable maturity and experience when talking about her craft. “I think I’ve learned a little bit from everyone I’ve worked with” she acknowledges, “I had the amazing opportunity to support some artists in the last couple of years, and I definitely brought different elements of them along with me. Just ways of behaving and acting, ways of approaching music…gigging especially, not taking things to heart. Being gracious as well. I learned a lot from Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman, Blair Dunlop, Jess Morgan…Sam Kelly and all the others who’ve been on the album. But I think the main thing I’m trying to remember is that you should just be yourself with your music because that’s the only way you’ll have your own voice, the only way it will sound authentic and not contrived.”
Naturally, for someone who puts so much thought into the meaning behind her art, Kitty is at her happiest when her audiences connect with that meaning. “I did a gig up in the Lake District recently” she smiles, “I thought everyone there would be Cumbrian, but the people there were from all over the place because they were visiting the Lakes on holidays. They all came up to me in the interval, and at the end, I think I spoke to the whole audience. They were all so lovely; they’d come to the Lake District to explore, so they understood where I was coming from because they had similar interests. It just felt like a room full of people who were on the same wavelength. It felt really special…”
Those wanting to make their own connection with Kitty’s music can catch her on tour throughout November and early December (see dates below).
Namer of Clouds is out now on Navigator Records http://smarturl.it/namerofclouds
Kitty MacFarlane UK Tour Dates
Fri, NOV 02 – The Marlowe Kit, Canterbury
Sun, NOV 04, Halsway Manor – National Centre for Folk Arts, Taunton
Wed, NOV 07 – The Verdict Cafe and Jazz Club, Brighton
Thu, NOV 08 – West End Centre, Aldershot
Sat, NOV 10 – Bristol Folk House Album Launch with band, Bristol
Tue, NOV 13 – The Water Rats Album Launch with band, London
Sat, NOV 17 – The Dolphin, Bovey Tracey
Wed, NOV 21 – Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham
Fri, NOV 23 – Leicester Guildhall, Leicester
Sat, NOV 24 – Forest Arts Centre, New Milton
Fri, NOV 30 – Stonehaven Folk Club, Aberdeen
Mon, DEC 03 – Hug and Pint, Glasgow
Wed, DEC 05 – 13 The Warehouse, Morecambe
Fri, DEC 07 – The Maltings Theatre, St Albans
Sat, DEC 08 – The Bowerhouse, Maidstone
Sun, DEC 09 – The York Tavern, Norwich