Sairie have been together for about a year and comprise of Emma Morton (vocals, autoharp), Jon Griffin (vocals, guitar) and Andy Thomas (bass). Last year, they released a single ‘The Gairdner’ & ‘The Clinging Vine’ which we played on our Folk Show (Episode 54).
Jon and Emma actually met through playing in Lutine together, whose 2014 album White Flowers we reviewed here. They’re from East Sussex and have a shared love of folklore, dark tales, mystery and nature.
The video below for ‘Scarlet and Blue’ (also our Song of the Day) is the title track of their new EP which features a collection of original folk songs. Emma tells us that “Scarlet and Blue was inspired by Roland Leighton’s poem to Vera Brittain in 1915, Villanelle, and the lyrics are based on the villanelle poem form. We filmed the video on the Sussex hills where his family lived, and where his father and sister buried his blood-stained uniform which was returned from the war after he died.”
You can read the poem online here: http://www.ox.ac.uk/world-war-1/people/roland-aubrey-leighton
Just as they managed to do in Lutine, Sairie continue to sound both effortlessly minimal and somehow whole. As Thomas Blake said, they occupy the shifting, elemental space of their songs. Their sound is utterly spellbinding and beautiful.
Download the single via Bandcamp here: https://sairie.bandcamp.com/track/scarlet-and-blue-single
Upcoming gigs:
Rossi bar – Brighton, 28th Feb