If these two faces look familiar, then it may be because they have previously featured on Folk Radio as Rainy Day Woman. Originally from Exmouth, Devon, Hannah Pawson and Gabriel Wynne are now based in Bristol and have a new name: Fritillaries.
Alongside the announcement of their name change, the duo are releasing a new single on the 10th of December titled ‘Working Late‘, a brooding song of anger and frustration about the treatment of asylum seekers in the UK.
They have also launched a Kickstarter for their debut album, which you can support here.
Hannah shared the following on the new single Working Late:
“I was thinking about the UK’s treatment of asylum seekers and the systems which perpetuate mistreatment. I had been training and working as a social worker from 2016-2019 and came across many people in desperate situations, including asylum seekers with the constant threat of deportation or detention and the very real prospect of being separated from their families, lives and loved ones. I found the necessary impartiality of being a social worker difficult: I was an agent of the state supporting people oppressed by the very state I was representing. I left this career feeling pretty broken, like the system in which I had played a part. As an agent of a broken system, I had felt I was letting people down who desperately needed support. Leaving that role after years of training I felt I was letting those people down again, as well as colleagues and friends who were trying enormously hard under impossible circumstances. The people I felt I’d let down are who the song is about, most importantly the people who deserve the support they seldom receive.
“The song as I’d written it was angry and hurting, and we didn’t get very far arranging it as a duo. We ended up trying it out during the recording session for our single Little Bird, with the impromptu arrangement that emerged becoming the single. Andy Hamill (double bass) helped us dig into the groove, with Kit Massey (fiddle) adding bluegrass energy and snarl and Ru Lemer (producer) adding cohesion and helping dig into the song’s pop sensibility. We feel it’s catchy and dark and enigmatic, with an immediacy that comes from only having a couple hours to learn, arrange and record.”
Working Late has a high lonesome quality, especially in Hannah’s vocals which deeply underpin the hopelessness of the situation that many find themselves in through no fault of their own.
Gabriel shared the following on the duo’s name change and their forthcoming debut album:
“Working Late is our first release under our new name, Fritillaries. Lockdown saw us and our music at a pretty low ebb: we’d tried to go full-time in December 2019 and had spent the winter booking shows for the spring and summer, which were all cancelled. We weren’t playing much, besides a few songs Hannah was writing, which were different from those we’d been playing out over the past few years – quieter, more personal. Over time, we came to craft more delicate arrangements for quieter songs, as well as more melody-driven upbeat tunes designed for the four-piece stringband we’d been recording with. The name change came out of a desire to reflect this growth which, like much of the magic around music-making and appreciating, occurred in the dark and over time.
“Following our signing to Pear O’Legs Records earlier this year, we’re currently creating our debut album, Fritillaries, which we’ll release in summer 2022. We’ve been overwhelmed by the response to our Kickstarter campaign, which is running until 16th December, though there’s still a long way to go. We cannot overstate how excited we are about the album: we have songs and arrangements we’re enormously proud of and some relationships with great musicians who will help us put our vision into people’s ears. The album is about the people, places and experiences missed and found in isolation and the things we find growing when we dig down into spaces the light doesn’t reach.
“Working Late came out of a new, unpolished idea played live with the musicians assembled for our Little Bird recording session. With the basis of a really powerful, expansive ensemble and a set of songs of which we’re hugely proud, we cannot wait for Fritillaires to come out next year.”
Help them fulfil their dreams and support them via Kickstarter here.
They will be launching their new single on Thursday, 9th of December at ‘Working Late’ @ 7:30pm, Bristol, UK
More here: https://www.pearolegs.com/artists/fritillaries