Burd Ellen – Says The Never Beyond
Independent – 27 November 2020
Burd Ellen is the name given to the solo project of Glasgow-based singer and musician Debbie Armour, which has, since 2018, formed a natural continuation of her earlier work with artists like Alasdair Roberts, Alex Neilson and Howie Reeve. Here, in the company of singer and multi-instrumentalist Gayle Brogan aka Pefkin (also of Electroscope and Barrett’s Dottled Beauty), Debbie aims to explore, primarily through the medium of traditional song from Britain and beyond, ideas of persistence, resonance and deep cultural roots. Burd Ellen evokes dark landscapes and deep stories by means of innovative instrumentation, drone and sound-wash techniques which support detailed, often also quite intricately layered, vocal work to create a unique sonic atmosphere.
Burd Ellen’s debut release was December 2018’s mini-album Silver Came; 2019 then saw the release of a recording of the album’s wonderful launch gig (for which Debbie and Gayle were joined by pianist Lucy Duncan (aka Luki). There was also an EP containing four intriguing mixes of the dark, ambiguous song Morning Come, Maria’s Gone; and two singles: Chi Mi Bhuam (a gentle vocal piece using a fragment of an ode to the Isle of Mull, Debbie’s birthplace) and Griogal Cridhe (a tragic and grisly Gaelic lament) paired with a curious experimental new work for broken hurdy-gurdy and voice.
But it’s probably for the separate project Green Ribbons (released in late summer of 2019), that Debbie’s name is best known thus far. Green Ribbons found Debbie joined by Alasdair Roberts, Frankie Armstrong and Ben Webb (aka Jinnwoo) for a revelatory one-off celebration of the power of unaccompanied song which tellingly showcased both traditional and contemporary material (the resultant album was reviewed here).
And so we come to Says The Never Beyond, which constitutes Burd Ellen’s second studio album. It’s a collection of carols and wintersongs that occupy the liminal space between sacred and secular, connecting to the deep seasonal traditions of Britain and Ireland. Its musical soundscapes transport the listener from intimate and small-scale to cavernous and laden; in which respect it might be perceived as an album of sonic extremes. And yet it nevertheless retains a beautiful consistency with Debbie’s output thus far, dovetailing and drawing from the various strands of activity and musical expression evidenced and developed through her previous releases mentioned above.
Regarding the actual song choices, Debbie says: ”Winter songs are the joy of my repertoire. I love the very old, very earthy carols and ritual songs. There’s real emotional weight to them, and an immediacy in their conjuring of the landscape.” That sense of immediacy is palpable in these customised Burd Ellen renditions, whether they’re stripped-back a cappella (Wexford Carol, Sans Day Carol) or quite densely clothed (Hela’r Dryw Bach and Taladh Chriosda) and/or with a sense of antique foreboding (Please To See The King, Coventry Carol). Debbie also points to the unconscious thematic angle, whereby many of the songs concern the “quiet joys of Mary’s motherhood”, thereby reflecting her own experience of motherhood particularly over the past year.
The actual gestation of the album was fraught too – inevitably, given the lockdown restrictions of the past few months. It was recorded remotely across Scotland and pieced together by engineer Jim McEwan. But what a powerfully cohesive record it has turned out to be – “a big swirling thing” at times, according to Debbie; which though it may occasionally feel almost claustrophobic, is also a work of pinpoint-close-focus intimacy, not least in its precision of execution. Debbie and Gayle here continue their long-term collaboration with Jer Reid (of Sumshapes and Glasgow Improvisers’ Orchestra), who plays guitar on a number of the album’s tracks as well as piano on Corpus Christi Carol. One track (Cutty Wren) also features the harpistry of Rachel Newton, while album finale Taladh Chriosda involves long-time Mogwai collaborator Luke Sutherland in the guise of Rev Magnetic (who’d previously worked with Burd Ellen on the Chi Mi Bhuam remix).
Burd Ellen’s take on Please To See The King opens the album, with an ethereal, if caustic two-minute electronic prelude that subsides to a bare drone out of which finally arises a simple two-part vocal arrangement of the familiar processional. The sinister 16th century Coventry Carol, which comes next, brings a heady reimagining of this unsettling piece, replete with cool harmonies, eerie violin weavings, ominous percussive clattering and glistening electric guitar. Then, in contrast, there’s the Wexford Carol, given in a gloriously unhurried, subtly ornamented and well pointed solo a cappella rendition that provides an oasis of stillness nestles between the disturbing restlessness of the violent events of Coventry Carol and the more animated hunt ritual of the Cutty Wren, offset against a pulsating harp and keyboard motif and grunge guitar. Following on neatly, the next (fifth) track is Hela’r Dryw Bach, a version of which had previously been outed at the Glad Café launch gig for Burd Ellen’s debut CD Silver Came – and appears on the live album of that gig. It’s a Welsh language version of the wren song (the title translates as “hunting the wren”), but the doomy drone-based prelude of this latest recorded version, which builds into a densely layered sequence of cascading vocals, giving what I presume to be a virtually identical recounted narrative a completely different feel to that of the song that precedes it.
This is followed by an intelligent new take on the 1933 Benjamin Britten setting of the Corpus Christi Carol – which has most famously been revisited in recent years by Jeff Buckley on his 1994 debut album Grace. Even so, this is one of the less-frequently-sung carols: sometimes called the Falcon Carol, it’s a relative of Down In The Forest, although it was only first discovered in 1504 and its potentially obscure allegories are continually debated by scholars. The present Burd Ellen reworking is a masterly musical expression of its mysteries, but sports a mildly puzzling piano-and-guitar coda that meanders hesitantly (somewhat in the manner of early King Crimson I thought). Textural sparseness then resumes with Debbie and Gayle in spirited close harmony on a totally charming a cappella rendition of the Sans Day Carol.
And so we come to the album’s finale, a majestic, stately and thickly upholstered account of Taladh Chriosda, the Scottish Gaelic lullaby for the Christ Child, which is traditionally sung at Midnight Mass. With assistance from Rev Magnetic, Debbie and Gayle give us just two of its many verses (those expressing Mary’s love for the child and her feeling of privilege to be raising him – clearly resonating for Debbie’s own motherhood situation), surrounded by ringing and cascading alleluias and punctuated and underpinned by mighty electronic heartbeats atop a rumbling, stentorian ground bass synth, rather conjuring a gigantic sepulchral organ in an ancient church.
Says The Never Beyond is an impressive achievement by any standards, for it delivers a startlingly innovative approach to the performance of the deep seasonal repertoire. Here, Debbie and Gayle and their collaborators may be viewed as pursuing a parallel experimental path to the recent aural adventures of Stick In The Wheel on (the latter half especially of) Hold Fast – and yet the visceral nature of the aural impact of Burd Ellen’s music is quite different. From its title alone, Says The Never Beyond may sound a cryptic proposition, but the album provides a thrilling and utterly hypnotic ride through the wintersong repertoire.
Order via Bandcamp (Digital/CD/Vinyl): https://burdellen.bandcamp.com/album/says-the-never-beyond