TEYR – Estren
Sleight of Hands Records (SOHR2104CD) – 30 April 2021
A lot has happened since TEYR released their debut album in 2016. That record, Far From The Tree, was a high-octane rush of Celtic-influenced folk, hewn out of wild Cornish landscapes and perfected in the crucible of jam sessions and London pub gigs. The trio began work on the follow-up in 2018 in a log cabin in rural Finland and made several trips back to Cornwall as part of the writing process. The result, after three years of hard work, is Estren, another exhilarating collection of songs.
The brash confidence that characterised that debut album is still there in abundance on their new offering, as is the swiftness and energy of their musical interaction. The band consider this to be a continuation of Far From The Tree, and it certainly is. But it is more than that – there are signs of development, new growth, an expansion of ideas. This is most obvious in the wide range of collaborators who feature on these songs. The album’s list of guest musicians stretches into double figures and contains some surprises: classical instrumentation and synths rub shoulders with the violins and concertinas.
But the heart of the band remains the three core members (the name of the band is Cornish for ‘three’). All three are essentially multi-instrumentalists, with Dominic Henderson favouring pipes and whistles, James Patrick Gavin the guitar and Tommie Black-Roff the accordion. Although as songwriters their concerns are seemingly historical, mythological or rural, there is a grittiness just below the surface that occasionally emerges to remind you of their modernity and their relevance. Themes quickly emerge: the idea of travel and movement and flux as a necessary and desirable part of the human condition, the crossing of boundaries, acceptance and conflict.
The opening two tracks – the linked instrumentals Shannon Frisk Arrivals and Departures – manage to introduce these themes perfectly without the need for words. There is a feeling of excitement from the opening notes, the sense of a band straining at the leash, and an immediate (and at times experimental) fluidity between the trio. It serves as a perfect introduction to their craft, as well as serving as a kind of border – albeit a porous one – between their previous album and this one.
The title track makes the themes of movement and migration even more explicit. The word Estren is Cornish for ‘stranger’, and the lyrics of this beautiful traditional song brilliantly evokes the freedom, fear, sadness and wildness that battle for primacy in the heart of the emigrant, while also drawing links between historical emigration and the current refugee crisis. It is a stirring piece, with a final chorus sung by guests Hilary Coleman, Sid Goldsmith and Ruth Corey.
Lengthy instrumental Threshold is a dreamlike dance, with Henderson’s whistle flitting above and around Black-Roff’s accordion, while Gavin’s acoustic guitar provides a rhythmic bedrock. Gone Is The Traveller, written by Henderson, is a slow-burning and atmospheric hymn to the fragile power of the human imagination. Guests here include Flora Curzon, Holly Harman, Amy Jane Fisher and Nina Harries, and their palette of violins, viola and double bass is broad but restrained. It is progressive in scope, but the result is closer to drone and ambient music.
Halfway through the album comes a curveball, and a wonderful one at that. La Bestia is a bayou waltz that transforms into a vivid musical interpretation of a Cornish fishing fleet’s working methods. There is an astonishing vocal section sung by cellist Abel Selaocoe in his native Sesotho language. The commingling of cultures here is the perfect example of folk music in action, embracing change and creating something vibrant and relevant. It is reflected in An Tros, a kind of companion piece and a remarkable setting of a very old traditional Cornish language song with extra verses by Hilary Coleman and the children of Mousehole School. Once again Selaocoe’s vocals provide a striking counterpoint to the traditional Cornish singing. Another perfectly judged example of this cultural cross-pollination occurs in Flower Of The Sun, where an original song (written by Gavin with Chris Preston) examines Basque folklore, ably aided by Ruth Corey’s synth.
Perhaps Corey’s most striking contribution to the album though is her vocal on the well-known traditional song The Drummer (widely known as The Pretty Drummer Boy or The Female Drummer), which she delivers with a rare combination of sincerity and wit. And despite the age of the song, it doesn’t sound dated or anachronistic – the energy and playfulness of versions by The Watersons and Steeleye Span remain, but the addition of a new verse (written by Black-Roff) gives the message a welcome pacifist update.
The band’s spell in Finland is reflected in Kuusilta, an instrumental of subtle beauty that describes the dance of the moon on a lake, the tension between an object and its reflection. The strings – the same musicians as Gone Is The Traveller – provide a quiet tension of their own, somewhere between programmatic classical music and impressionistic folk. There has been a trend towards Nordic themes in folk music in recent years – reflecting a wider societal trend – but TEYR’s addition to the canon stands apart, drawn as it is from lived experience.
TEYR are masters of mood, but they are also socially conscious. It’s true that much changed since their debut, both for the band and in the world at large. Estren’s closing track, Little Giants, is an impassioned stomp with a climactic wordless vocal refrain courtesy of Corey, which the group describe as ‘a victory march for all those who suffer and struggle in the face of adversity’. If the opening songs presented a kind of continuum, a callback to the TEYR of old, by the time you have reached the end you realise just how far they have come in the last five years. The energetic and wildly entertaining delivery is still there, but the added lyrical depth and musical variety, the moral bite and the sensitivity to the world’s problems elevate them to the very top tier of today’s folk music.
Order via Bandcamp: https://teyr.bandcamp.com/album/estren
In celebration of the album’s release, TEYR are throwing an online launch party at 7pm (UK time) tonight (30 April 2021)! It’ll be streamed live on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube.
Website: https://teyr.co.uk/