Rowan Rheingans – The Lines We Draw Together
Red Dress Records – 23 August 2019
Rowan Rheingans’ new album is dedicated to her two grandmothers, whose memories and experiences helped shape many of these songs. In her liner notes, Rheingans also pays tribute to the writers John Berger, Mary Oliver and Etty Hillesum. This combination of the personal and the poetic (which, when explored more deeply in the context of the album’s lyrics, contains within it an implied connection between suffering and beauty) is important: it provides clues to Rheingans’ unique way of working, which itself draws as much from poetry, drama and appreciation of place as it does from songwriting as we know it.
Rheingans’ output has been prolific of late, with albums by Lady Maisery, the Rheingans Sisters and Songs of Separation under her belt. She has built up a reputation as one of the most innovative performers on the folk circuit and has amassed a series of BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards nominations, winning Best Original Track (Mackerel by the Rheingans Sisters in 2016) and Best Album (Songs of Separation in 2017). So it might come as a surprise to learn that The Lines We Draw Together is her first album as a solo artist.
But it has been worth the wait. The circuitous nature of Rheingans’ musical path has helped to create a piece of work that sounds both fresh and full of experience. From the first verse of the first song – What Birds Are – we are made aware of a rare songwriting talent. Even a cursory glance through the lyrics gives you a clue to the author’s innate grasp of the subtler points of prosody. The first four lines each end in unstressed syllables (the ‘feminine ending’, to give it its literary definition). Within the song, it gives the impression of growth and movement, of melodic malleability. And there is poetry in the meaning as well as in the metrical structure. That opening verse is a pastoral vision of dewy grass and rustling olive trees, and then the peace is shattered: we learn that the trees shake because of approaching planes, and bombs fill the air. It is worth noting that the first line that doesn’t end in an unstressed syllable is the first line to directly mention war. It is blunt and unavoidable and hits you with the full force of surprise. Already the themes of conflict and beauty are being examined in detail.
Later on, in the same song, the planes depart and the birds return: a sign of hope, or the realisation that the non-human world continues on its course regardless of our wars. Rheingans’ voice builds up to a repeated phrase – ‘birds being doing what birds are’ – whose intentionally wonky syntax has something of E.E. Cummings about it (so it comes as no surprise that it is taken from a poem by acclaimed writer Joey Connolly). It also has the feel of a ritual cry to the air, a rallying call to appreciate the natural world.
Lines, which features the impressionistic and often spooky guitar of Dylan Fowler, takes a traditional song structure and unravels it into something modern, visceral and hugely atmospheric, full of dark and haunting imagery. Traces is even more ambitious. For its first four minutes, it is a moving and melancholy fiddle tune, before a delicately-plucked banjo introduces a short lyric of haiku-like simplicity and beauty. The song fades out on washes of twitchy percussion and electronics, leaving you with the feeling that you have experienced something strangely elemental.
And that feeling continues on Fire, an impassioned and trenchant critique of the mindset that war is necessary or even good, and can be justified on the grounds that we are fighting for something we love. Historically, Rheingans points out, love and the language that is used to describe it has been co-opted by those with extreme and violent agendas, and it is the job of art and self-expression to fight against these agendas. Essentially, it is a song about the power that art can possess, for good or bad, and how historical lessons can help us make sure our art remains in the right hands.
Brave is another anti-war song of heartbreaking beauty, directly informed by Rheingans’ great-grandmother. It tells a simple story, a story that played out in slightly different ways for thousands of wartime families, of a wife waiting for her husband to return from the front. The song is spun out on a clattering, glitchy framework (provided by Robert Bentall’s electronics) that barely holds together.
Despite being the album’s most minimal song, Sky is one of its most affecting. With the sparest of musical backing, it echoes the opening track’s imagery of birds. This time, the images are darker and more ambiguous, directly inspired by the final journal entries of the visionary Dutch diarist Etty Hillesum, who was killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Hillesum’s writing is notable for its conflation of rapture and hardship, its immense compassion in the midst of terror, and this is the message that Rheingans gets across throughout the album.
Long Walk Home cleverly combines a waltz with a martial drumbeat, before a mournful clarinet gives way to a hopeful, almost jubilant denouement. The song fades into a distant piano recording of the jazz standard On The Sunny Side Of The Street, dripping with a sad kind of nostalgia that spills over into the next song, Walls. The sheer range of emotions Rheingans is able to control across such a short time is staggering.
Sorrow is a banjo-led, Americana-tinged exploration of Hillesum’s assertion that sorrow, as opposed to hatred and revenge, should be given ‘the space its gentle origins demand.’ The melody is the perfect musical expression of that gentleness of thought. The final track, the lengthy instrumental Keep Breathing, is a broad chamber-folk landscape that moves deftly between elegant splendour and pensive hush, proving that Rheingans’ compositional skills are a match for her lyrical flair.
The Lines We Draw Together seems to revel in contradictions. It is an album for our times, but steeped in history. Its poetry is not short on intellectual rigour, but its message is one of earthy wisdom and simplicity. It confronts pain and talks of the possibility of a better world. But Rheingans’ songs are good enough and big-hearted enough to accommodate all these contradictions. It feels like an important album, an album that is full of life.
ALBUM LAUNCH: On Thursday, September 5th, Rowan Rheingans will perform the album in full at Kings Place, London, featuring guest musicians from the record. GET YOUR TICKETS HERE
For all Tour Dates and ticket links please visit: https://www.rowanrheingans.co.uk/live
The Lines We Draw Together is Out Now.
Order via Amazon
Photo Credit: Elly Lucas