It seems almost unthinkable that We Are Only Sound is Lucy Farrell’s first solo album. The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has been part of the furniture on the British folk scene for a number of years. A list of her collaborative projects is as notable for its quality as for its length: she has formed duos with both Andrew Waite and Jonny Kearney, performed and recorded with Eliza Carthy’s Wayward Band, and lends her talents to a host of other bands including Carthy, Oates, Farrell & Young, Modern Fairies and Gluepot. She counts The Unthanks and Julia Jacklin amongst her fans and, in 2017, received a BBC2 Folk Award for her work alongside Rachel Newton, Alasdair Roberts and Emily Portman in The Furrow Collective. As part of that quartet, she makes some of the most genuinely innovative traditional music around, and it comes as no surprise to find that she carries that spirit of innovation into her own work.
Where acts like The Furrow Collective bring an experimental edge to traditional song, Farrell’s solo work focuses on her own songwriting: all twelve of the tracks on We Are Only Sound are self-written, and each is marked by a confidence of execution and variety of style that belies the fact that this is a debut. These feel like songs that have been lived in for a while, perfected without being overworked. The album’s first single, But For You, is a tender ballad that appears at first almost naive, but the ease with which the song grows into its own skin gives an indication of Farrell’s immense talents as a composer and a writer. When the backing vocals kick in (courtesy of Lau’s Kris Drever, who also provides some of the album’s guitars), the song seems to thicken with emotion: longing and acceptance and the idea of giving yourself wholly to the love of another. Farrell and Drever’s voices spiral around each other and knit together, then come to a contented rest. Structurally, it is an unconventional but very rewarding piece of songwriting.
Even more self-assured is the album’s opening song, Paperthin. Advancing on a deceptively simple ripple of guitar, it balances a mournful country-pop aesthetic with crystal-clear singing and astute lyrics. The minimal plucked strings that begin Snows Blowing Wild set up an atmosphere of ice and thaw before the chorus hits, and with it, a muffling pillow of studio effects and muted electronic bleeps. This feels like a juxtaposition of cold and warm rather than of old and new and is just one of many examples of Farrell’s eye for detail. She is an expert at teasing exquisite threads out of a handful of raw materials.
At times the songs here seem to be working through pain and sadness, which isn’t surprising given that they chronicle an eight-year period of Farrell’s life, a spell that included a host of personally life-changing events to go with everything else that has happened in the world during that time. Keep On is a hymn to the quiet power of perseverance through difficult times, a soft, gently bubbling melody that almost seems to mirror a person’s journey through life. There is grace and dignity on show here, but also a lot of spirit. Suddenly (Woken By Alarms) has an even more delicate progression, crystallising into a quietly satisfying chorus augmented by Drever’s backing vocals.
Often on We Are Only Sound, it is the small things that make the difference. The distant percussive sounds that haunt the background in Never Enough contrast with the frankly beautiful multitracked vocals of the chorus – the tension created by this contrast is like the tension between a bird and a cage. With seemingly no effort, Farrell is able to present two sides of a coin at once. There is a mystery here too: the mystery of the tap of feet on a wooden staircase, the strange claustrophobia of a large but empty house.
These impressions may stem in part from the way the album was recorded: Farrell was given the use of the recording space in Much Wenlock Abbey, now a private property owned by Nick Drake’s sister Gabrielle. The creak and shift of the building, its aura and history, have seeped into the music (Farrell was also able to use Drake’s piano and guitar). Although none of these songs are traditional, they all have a kind of patina, a vague scent of age or, rather, of the past. Love Is Easy’s opening moments have a dreamlike quality, something half-remembered. A wash of background sound has an almost narcotic effect before an unexpected melodic twist or slightly jazzy chord change breaks the reverie.
Background noise plays an increasingly important part the deeper you go into the album: the short, minimal Sit Down slips by on a lulling swathe of white noise, its plucked notes emerging like tentative sunbeams through a cloud. The eerie electronic buildup of Sacrifice leads into one of the darker moments, but as ever, Farrell’s voice is full of restrained defiance. ‘I can’t see a way through it, only round’, she sings: it’s a hope born out of difference, of doing things in a new way, and it becomes one of We Are Only Sound’s defining themes.
The more unadorned songs here can be just as moving. Edwyn Lullaby has a timelessness about it: the vocals are intimate, precise, slightly smoky, while every quiet rasp of guitar string against fretboard is audible. This is music that is not afraid to show its human side. The clipped electric guitar on the country-tinged Safe In The Open provides space for Farrell’s voice to carry a soaring melody, pulling the instruments behind her.
The title track, which finishes the album, has more than a hint of the epic about it: dramatic keys, knuckly electric guitars, a swirl of electronics and wordless backing vocals and a refrain that gathers the threads of the album together. It’s a brilliant way to sign off, underlining what has gone before with an assured flourish. It may have taken a while, but with We Are Only Sound, Lucy Farrell has given us a bold debut album of rare sophistication and a moving document of an emotional few years.
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