Harri Endersby – Mazes
Ivy Crown Records – 1 November 2019
Mazes, the second album from Durham-based singer-songwriter Harri Endersby sees her recruiting fiddle wizard Ciaran Algar and Toby Shaer on flutes, whistles and mandolin alongside multi-instrumentalist husband Rich March and Ian Stephenson on piano and harmonium for a nine-song set of self-penned contemporary folk songs exploring themes of home and belonging.
One of several inspired by her home in the North East and the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, it opens on the breezy slopes of Mountainside before she inhales to start Breathe, a fiddle-laced slow Celtic-tinged slow-march ballad about the restorative power of nature as a healer of heartbreak. This, in turns, leads on to the simple strummed twilight serenity of Golden Hour punctuated by sudden brief flurries and Algar again adding emotional textures.
Featuring watery sparse repeated guitar notes, muted drum beats, fiddle and ruminative piano, Mazes keeps the pace sedate and the mood reflective, the tempo picking up on the nature imagery laden love song Glow with its ululating intro, walking rhythms and Endersby soaring up and down the scales. Having just sung Small Birds, another more uptempo track, there’s an avian guest appearance at the start of the lullabying Isla, a field recording from Harris, the acoustic guitar gradually joined by whistles, harmonium and fiddle. Give all these feathery references, it seems appropriate that the penultimate gentle, circling fingerpicked melody track is titled Flight, conjuring images of soaring murmurations above the earth, riding the air currents of the evening.
Another field recording, of what sounds like waves on the shore, paves the way into the final, train rhythm frisky closer, Close To Home, a celebratory, upbeat number with a communal ‘hey hey hey’ refrain as the journey gathers nearer to the embrace of its welcoming destination. Rustic, pastoral and suffused with a sense of tranquillity and of being one with the landscape, Endersby has crafted a quietly enrapturing album about navigating your way through life’s labyrinths with the healing power of nature as your guide.
Live Dates
November
03 – Shakespeares, Sheffield
08 – Harwell Village Hall, Oxford
09 – The Toy & Model Museum, Brighton
10 – Bristol Folk House
11 – Green Note, London
https://www.harriendersby.com/