Yvonne Lyon – Growing Wild
Independent – Out Now
Since her superb Metanoia collection, her well-judged Songs for Christmas album that shows how to avoid the banana skins so prevalent in that genre, as well as her work on Vesper Sky, an inventive spoken-word-and-music project with Stewart and Carol Henderson, I actively look forward to Yvonne Lyon’s new work.
This release has been a grower with me with successive listens unearthing a tranche of details laid around skillfully crafted songs.
The quote she sets inside the cover asks, “What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” and sets the tone for much of its content. She revealed in a recent interview with poet/pastor Steve Stockman that she has been suffering from mild depression for a while and that this collection is her way of distilling those experiences into something beautiful.
That fragility and a spirit sensitive to the poor and hurting has always characterised her music, but she can’t have expressed it any more clearly than in the coping song Enough.
“You wake up trying to make sense of the world
But the weight of it all has already unfurled in your bones…
When you come face to face with a shadow so strong
That you barely know how to just keep holding on…
Sometimes just breathing in is enough.”
She does a similar thing in Illuminate, where the internal rhymes reflect her poetic sensibility:
“Most of us are weirdos and some we wax and wane
And so we work a little harder just trying to stay sane.”
The latter is one of two tracks that clearly show the beauty she aims for, particularly reminding me of Michelle Tumes’ gorgeously ethereal voice as she sings the title, the other being Insignificant as Stars.
Insignificant as Stars is one of those lyrics that deal with living, drifting and then coming back to the start afresh – as T. S Eliot famously put it, “The end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time.” She writes of time breathing and of “intimate sighs,” and her singing reflects that delicacy.
But there are bolder songs here too. Opener Winter Ground, a lively piece written with Julie Lee about migrating birds, is mandolin-led and fresh. This album’s main earworm is the poppy title track, whose sound reflects the celebratory spirit so prevalent in Liverpool poet Stewart Henderson’s work: “So let’s waste our days on living and our love will be our lives / in the riot and relief of growing wild.” His wordplay binds together the ideas of plants boldly daring to push through cracks in concrete and the spirit that looks for ways to expand life as days go on, rather than shrinking into comfort.
We Accumulate the Years is his other lyric, a reflective song that looks back over life (a thread in his recent work, noticeably in Vesper Sky). Lyon’s regular production team of Sandy Jones and Wet Wet Wet’s Graeme Duffin bring that tone out in their soundscape, with cello more prominent, as it is in several pieces. Across the disc, their nuanced touch employs a sound bed that suits each song; sometimes with subtle electronica, sometimes piano arpeggios, sometimes fiddle – and they even give a welcome space to upright bassist Kev McGuire on the title track.
Three of the strongest tracks are purely Lyon’s own work, but she has also collaborated with possibly more fellow songwriters on this release than ever before. There are several co-writes as well as guest appearances with the likes of Boo Hewerdine, Derry singer songwriter Eilidh Patterson and Glasgow singer songwriter Elaine Lennon appearing on backing vocals. Eddi Reader also provides backing vocals on Compass Hill, a song sounding almost traditional in its natural, singalong chorus.
Back to Love, her collaboration with Beth Nielsen Chapman is similarly confident. Some electric guitar emphasis adds a touch of Americana as it rolls along fluidly, describing a relationship at a point of tension. The line, “We’re the king and queen of contradictions / like a scream inside a whisper” pulls you in like dust into a vortex.
These co-writes add a change of style throughout the album, not least Boo Hewerdine’s well-written A Bigger Heart, which brings a subtle retro vibe reminiscent of the one his Remembering gave to Dan Whitehouse’s Dreamland Tomorrow album.
With tracks as strong as these, a song like the yearning Chasing the Silence, a flowing joint effort with Nashville guitarist Dan Wheeler and David Lyon, can drift into the background, but it still keenly earns its place.
Altogether, this is another impressive set of songs, created with care, that grow richer with time as the character of each songs reveals itself.
Order via Bandcamp: https://yvonnelyon.bandcamp.com/album/growing-wild