Of all the visual and emotional relationships that music can induce, a ‘sense of place’ can be one of the most fascinating and enduring. Some of the most recent examples of this have come from Jim Ghedi, Toby Hay, Sally Ann Morgan, Sarah Louise, Cameron Knowler and Eli Winter. They have each, in their own individual way, managed to convey a powerful sense of place through their music.
I can now add Henry Parker and his latest album release, ‘Lammas Fair‘, to that list which Thomas Blake reviewed here. Parker made the point when talking about the album to emphasise the influence of the landscape on his music:
“The landscape here is definitely ingrained into who I am as a person and as a musician. What I love most is the combination of the high, wide open, heather moors and the contrast they provide with the dense mill towns down below. There’s something very special about being able to walk from the built-up valley bottom, from Bingley and then up onto the tops of the moors which are bleak and yet littered with rock carvings, outcrops and ring cairns.”
The whole album feels steeped in those West Yorkshire landscapes, and Thomas Blake picks up on this in his album review: “The album’s opening line – ‘The wind blows through the Hitching Stone’ shows how adept he is at setting a scene. It places the listener in the midst of a particular landscape from the off. Still, it also conveys the mystery of that landscape (the Hitching Stone, near Parker’s home in Yorkshire, is a glacial erratic, a geological feature that both belongs and doesn’t belong).”
He recently shared a video of a live recording made at the Corner House Recording Studio performing Return to the Sky. In his album review, Blake writes of how the song employs “a spare kind of poetry and an atmospheric, eastern-inflected melody to return to Silent Spring’s themes”. Silent Spring being Parker’s debut album which we reviewed here.
He is on tour now, see dates below.
If you’ve not yet seen Henry Parker, then try and catch one of his upcoming tour dates:
20th November – [ALBUM LAUNCH] Keighley, The Exchange
27th November – Atherton, The Snug [Supporting Bobby Lee]
10th December – Bourne (Lincolnshire), Morton New Day Church
11th December – Kirkby Malham, Kirkby Malham Parish Church [With Katie Spencer]
13th January – Bradford / Shipley, Topic Folk Club [Groove Pad]
20th January – Sheffield, Crookes Folk Club [The Princess Royal]
29th January – London, The Harrison
17th February – Saltaire, Caroline Street Social Club [Supporting Fuzzy Lights]
18th February – Huddersfield, Northern Quarter
20th March – Queensbury (Bradford), Black Dyke Mills
8th April – Blacko (Lancashire), Hamish’s
20th May – Leeds, The Grove [Folk at the Grove]
Ticket links and more details: https://henryparkermusic.co.uk/