Iona Lane – Hallival
Independent – 25 March 2022 (Digital/CD. Vinyl 24 June)
Driven by awe and wonder, hope and joy, Iona Lane‘s ‘Hallival’ is a masterful debut. Across this album, the Leeds-based folk singer delivers her poetic songs with the utmost care and attention. Subtle musical touches and contemplative warm vocals combine to make this one of the most rewarding albums of the year.
While the arrangements are contemporary sounding, the influence of tradition can be heard throughout. Iona is assisted by some top musicians, including Mia Scott on violin, Louis Berthoud on drums and shells, Sol Edwards on synth and Jay Taylor on double bass, guitar, piano and field organ – Sol and Jay also co-write a number of the songs with Iona. Rachel Newton and Lauren MacColl, who recently delivered their own carefully crafted creation Heal & Harrow, make a welcome appearance, providing harp and violin on the track Schiehallion. Recording and production duties rested on the more than ably experienced shoulders of ‘magic Andy’ Bell.
The album’s title, Hallival, is taken from the once volcanic height found on Scotland’s Isle of Rum. The northern hills and mountains have shaped this music; you can hear it and feel it throughout. Even the album artwork reflects that love, from the colour grading of the portrait on the cover to the vast aerial images; all credit to Elly Lucas for the design and photo processing and Jonathan Doyle for his excellent photographs.
Considering her connection to those northern peaks, it’s apt that the album opens to Western Tidal Swell, inspired by the Hebridean Isle of Rum and a longing to escape: “Oh I pine for that coastline/To climb mountains forged in volcanic decline.” She also credits Edwin Waugh’s 19th-century book A Limping Pilgrim as an influence for the song. The book’s opening draws a similar longing for escape: “as the crush, and din, and motley riot of Whit-week in Manchester were fast drawing nigh, I made haste to escape to the solitude of that sea-girt nest, in search of peaceful renovation”. Like Iona, Waugh is in awe of these monumental natural creations: “I cannot but be impressed by the magnificent aspect of these tremendous evidences of Nature’s action in some great convulsion, long before the first records of the human race.”
What follows is equally potent. The wordless chorale-like opening of Mary Anning (co-written with Sol Edwards) holds such an emotional force; all before Iona Lane sings a word, but what words they are as she celebrates a woman of knowledge and independence. Mary Anning was a palaeontologist whose work and recognition remained hidden thanks to misogynistic attitudes. Anning often sold her fossil findings to male colleagues who undoubtedly benefited from her hard work. In the song, she sings part of the well-known tongue twister ‘She sells sea shells on the sea shore’ originally written about Mary Anning. Mia Scott’s brooding violin helps hammer home her conviction that “Only men contend in science/One day I’ll contend in science”.
Joined by Jenny Sturgeon on vocals, the landscape again offers inspiration on Tipalt Burn, the weaving Northumbrian watercourse that is a tributary of the River South Tyne that starts in Black Fell and ends just south of Haltwhistle. Here she imagines the burn having a conversation with the nearby Hadrian’s Wall; it’s a poetic joy:
Said the burn to the wall
There’s use within your tumbled brick
You’re slumped in the ground
Here’s a chance to repurpose relics
In the borderlands
You’re making your home
Nature’s gift will give you
A licence to roam
The mood is lightened and uplifted on the collectively written May You Find Time (written with Sol Edwards and Jay Taylor) that is reminiscent of an Irish blessing. If this song were a brew, it would be made from wild berries, alongside the wish for wooden floors and a whistling kettle is the reinvigorating suggestion to ‘Take baths in wild waters…’.
Another co-write with Sol Edwards comes with Fingal & Bran inspired by the legend behind Machrie Moor standing stones on the Isle of Arran that explores the importance of companionship through myth and delivers the beautiful line:
For years we explored peaty wastelands
Blown barren by westlin winds
The Schiehallion Experiment of 1774, an attempt to measure the density of the Earth for the first time using the shape and location of the Grampian mountains (a range that includes Ben Nevis), inspires Schiehallion where the mythic and scientific mingle. Rachel Newton and Lauren MacColl add harp and violin, their interweaving playful melodies dancing up the heights of the peaks. There’s some subtle humour in the lyric ‘A local fiddler’s tune ignites’ that may well relate to a post-working bothy party incident rather than the fiddler’s pace. The party was attended by locals and scientists to celebrate their hard work. The careless fiddler got so drunk during the celebrations that he ignited his violin and burnt the bothy to the ground.
Throughout the album, the careful choice of instruments strengthens the impact of the lyrics. One of the finest examples is the power and sparseness offered by just voice and shruti box on the opening of Mermaid, enhancing that mental image painted by those opening lines –
In the far far north lay a gloom ridden shore
That jutted out into the cruel loch
The shruti again takes to the fore on The Poet & The Painter, probably my favourite song of the album. While it’s sad and moving, the subtlety of her lyrics adds to its potency. There is a poetic depth to her words that draw you in and, like the rest of the album, rewards repeated listens.
Weeks pass back in her apartment
She sings oh sweetly
She sings
Away her soul
There is a nice variation across the album’s length. The playful and quirky opening guitar lines of Headspace promises carefree respite from the turmoil. In contrast, Crossroads, accompanied by skittering percussion, glides and skips along, turning again to the past for what she describes as “a fictional narrative I wrote after learning about the banning of traditional music, instruments and dance at various times in the history of Scotland and Ireland.”
The album ends on Humankind, on which Iona is again joined by Jenny Sturgeon as she delivers final lyrics of optimism and hope:
When we fall, and we all fall, Someone will be there to hear us. May you find, then rewind Some of your time, for humankind.
As I said at the opening of this review, Hallival is a masterful debut. It’s also a poetic gift, one to lose yourself in that will continue to reward you with each listen.
Pre-Order Hallival: https://ffm.to/hallival-ionalane
Funded by Help Musicians UK, Launchpad and Leeds Conservatoire and distributed by Proper Music, Hallival will be showcased on a UK tour with an album launch at Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds on April 8, 2022.
For upcoming tour dates and tickets, visit: www.ionalane.com