Brigid Mae Power – Head Above The Water
Fire Records – 5 June 2020
Some of the great singers working in or close to the idiom of folk music have the ability to sound like they are talking directly and individually to the listener. Sandy Denny had it, as did Anne Briggs and Nic Jones. Irish singer Brigid Mae Power is a rare contemporary artist who can be talked about in the same breath as that select group. She has a way of singing that is personal and personable, a delivery that feels as if it is directly relating her interior monologues from her mind to yours, and yet she never shies away from difficult and potentially painful subjects. On the release of her second album, 2018’s Two Worlds, one review described her songwriting as ‘dizzyingly isolated.’ Applying that to the new album is only correct up to a point. Here she switches focus from her guitar work to the deceptively simple message of her singing, and in doing so becomes less isolated and ostensibly more approachable. Head Above The Water is a soft-sounding album that packs a surprising punch – it sees her coming out of isolation, bringing with her a message that is both clear and pressing.
As a male reviewer listening to an album whose lyrics deal primarily with the condition of being a woman, this can be both uncanny and enlightening. We are justifiably made to feel uncomfortable, implicated in the societal backdrop of these songs. The male gaze is turned back on to the listener and thanks to the intimacy of Power’s delivery we get to experience, for an instant, a part of what she experiences. This is most notable in songs like Wearing Red That Eve, in which she describes an encounter with a group of men in New York, or the ambiguous but incredibly moving Wedding For A Friend. These are songs that see her drawing strength from unlikely places, coping in imaginative ways with a life that makes things difficult. Although Power’s songs are never didactic, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take lessons from them.
Musically, Power has moved from the winding guitar-scapes of her previous records to a more homespun, band-based approach. Imagine an Irish Anne Briggs or Jessica Pratt fronting The Band circa The Basement Tapes, and you get somewhere near the rootsy country sway of opening track On A City Night. Power’s mellotron organ anchors the sound, while the pedal steel of Hamilton Belk swoons over the disarmingly catchy melody. The aforementioned Wearing Red That Eve is built on a stately Sandy Denny-esque piano, while Not Yours To Own’s minimal musical backdrop – a strummed guitar, gentle mellotron, subtle bass and bodhran – becomes the landscape of a dream thanks to Power’s almost painterly approach to singing.
She has assembled a striking array of musical talent as a means of achieving her musical vision, including Peter Broderick and Alasdair Roberts (who join Brigid on production duties as well as playing a variety of instruments), bass player Stevie Jones and Brian Mac Gloinn, who provides bouzouki and fiddle. They come together brilliantly on the slow-burning I Was Named After You, which also features Selah Broderick’s flute. We Weren’t Sure is more stripped-back but is the perfect showcase for Power’s ability to build a taut and meaningful lyric out of an enigmatic wordless vocal phrase.
You Have A Quiet Power could almost be a manifesto, a kind of signature song for the whole album, except this is an album that never seeks to preach or proselytise, so instead, we get something more interesting, an intimate portrait of an unknown subject. It’s a great example of how, for all its clarity, Head Above The Water is essentially composed of a series of small mysteries in the guise of songs. I Had To Keep My Circle Small is, on the surface at least, gently affirmative, self-help in song form. But it too has its enigmas: we never learn exactly why that self-help is needed in the first place. This method of songwriting means that the writer’s past traumas can be both genuine and universal.
If we are to consider Head Above The Water to have an autobiographical thread running through it then the album’s one traditional track – an elegantly sung rendition of The Blacksmith – might ironically be the closest we get to learning the root of any sadness that may lie at its heart. But really the tension between the ambiguous and the clear-cut is reward in itself. The title track, which brings the album to a close, provides us with a severing of ties, a bittersweet goodbye that unfolds over impressionistic piano. But it is a big-hearted goodbye and there is no sense of antagonism. And this is the essence of Power’s songwriting gift: her generosity of spirit permeates all of these songs, even the ones that describe hardship. This is her most accessible work to date, but also her most intricately layered: genuinely beautiful, quietly challenging and perfectly self-contained.
Head Above The Water is out on 5 June via Fire Records.
Rough Trade exclusive ‘blue drop clear’ vinyl / indie-store exclusive white LP / black LP / CD
Pre-order: https://fire-records.lnk.to/