Taken from their latest album Let The Light In, Spell Songs have shared a new video for the album track, Bramble. As mentioned by Billy Rough in his recent review of the album here, Spell Songs II: Let The Light In is a rather stunning collection of songs, bringing the spirit of the words and art of Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris vividly to musical life. The Spell Songs musicians and singers are Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux.
For those that may be new to this delightful and moving project, I’ve included Billy’s opening introduction from his review below:
Back in 2015, the author Robert Macfarlane published Landmarks, a “joyous meditation on land and language” (Observer, 2015). The book was, as Macfarlane explained in his introduction: “… a book about the power of language – strong style, single words – to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to literature I love….”
In its introduction, it also highlighted a troubling issue. In his research, Macfarlane came across a worrisome fact. Words, and consequently experiences related to the natural world, were slowly disappearing from children’s vocabulary. As an example, he highlighted the “culling” of words such as acorn, catkin, kingfisher, lark and willow from the Oxford Junior Dictionary in favour of words such as blog, bullet-point, committee and voicemail. The decision to remove and add certain words was made to reflect children’s experiences today, a concerning testament to our modern world.
Macfarlane’s thoughtful reflection on language, and its slow evaporation from the language of children, consequently inspired a collaboration with artist Jackie Morris for an illustrated collection of poems, or rather spells and thoughts. Titled The Lost Words: A Spell Book (2017), it and its sequel, The Lost Spells (2020), are enchantments; intended to be shared and savoured by adults as much as by children.
While many of the “spells” on the latest album are taken from the second book The Lost Spells, the Bramble spell is from the earlier The Lost Words. The song is led by Karine Polwart and features Julie Fowlis mimicking the song thrush in Gaelic.
Karine’s accompanying words in the CD share how the Bramble spell presages the first covid lockdown with “its images of snarled cars, locked doors and closed shutters.” She adds, “Me and my daughter spent much of Spring 2020 excavating the thorny nether regions of our back garden, where the vast coiling bramble briars were thick as fifty-pence pieces in places. We picked fruit all through that summer and into autumn too., not only brambles but raspberries, elderberries, sloes and sea buckthorn. These are such gifts in the tangle of it. In Robert’s original text, millions of moths make the air flutter. But they are not the only winged creatures conjured here. Julie speaks in the voice of Smeòrach, the song thrush, a gorgeous example of Gaelic birdsong mimesis.”
Bramble is also our Song of the Day.
Join the Spell Songs Winter 2022 Tour
27 Jan – Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
28 Jan – Perth Concert Hall
29 Jan – Sage Gateshead
30 Jan – Birmingham Symphony Hall
31 Jan & 1 Feb Cadogan Hall London
Tickets: thelostwords.org/live