While it’s been five years since Derbyshire’s Lucy Ward was last in the studio with her solo album Pretty Warnings, this new group project fills the gap nicely. The collaboration came about during the pandemic when the Global Music Match initiative matched the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winner with Iceland’s Svavar Knútur and Canadian Adyn Townes. They are joined by Sarah Matthews on violin, drummer Steve MacLachlan and Evan McCoshan on bass; it’s all original material, and Ward, Knútur and Townes take turns as lead vocalists.
They open with the woodsmoke tones of Townes singing the dreamy slow sway Astronaut, a Space Oddity-like musing on lovers separated by space (“Out on the edge of the stars/Endlessly drifting in the darkest of dark/Hope that it’s nice where you are/Remember the days we were young/We laid on our coats in the back of your truck/Wondering what we’d become“) and unable to reunite (“A piece of me woven in the fabric of space/A ghost in an infinite grave/At least they’ll remember my name“) inspired by Ward’s meeting with a young astronomer, she singing the response “I miss your feet on the ground/You left me so quiet at the speed of sound/Always thought you’d come back down/Forever your head in the clouds“.
They remain airborne and apart for the gentle Paper Plane, Ward and Knútur harmonising with Matthews’ fiddle providing the melodic refrain as they sing of loss and longing (“I hold my hand out, across our ocean/Our growing canyon, our great divide/I won’t pretend I don’t know how we got here/But it hurts less when I act surprised“), with music a means of reconciliation (“I hold my hand out, across our ocean/the words alone would not suffice/But maybe if I fold them in a melody/They could find a way to fly…And if by chance our voices would find each other, in harmony entwined/We’d make a bed of golden threads/And never lose our way again“).
The pace picks up with tumbling drums fuelling the energy on the percussive Work It Out, Townes on lead, Ward on harmonies, for a catchy number that grew out of the frustrations of being a musician during the pandemic (“Tried to drink the ocean dry/every other Wednesday night/Running faster than my own mind/Waiting on a broken traffic light“). The mood subsides again for the fingerpicked, James Taylor-ish Seasons, written by Townes as Andrew M.L.Brown, joined by Ward on another bittersweet song of loss (“Sometimes even castles fall/No matter how strong the walls/Feed the lions call the wolves/ Winter, spring, summer or fall/When I lost you I don’t recall“) which, underscored by violin, imagines Johnny Cash singing to June Carter following her passing.
Things take a very different musical approach as Knútur steps up to sing the circling fingerpicked melody of Isn’t It Funny, a wry exploration of disillusion (“Isn’t it funny how all of your dreams come apart at the seams?”) that draws on Icelandic folklore (“A merman is sitting/On a rock by the sea/With a slow foamy grin/And a grim salty laughter/Maniacally cackling/Sarcastically clapping“) and which, swathed in strings, sounds like it should be part of some Lloyd Webber/Sondheim musical.
Their contrasting three voices come together, sharing verses for the swaying Everything, a song prompted by people experiencing homelessness in Montreal (“I am here falling asleep on the steps again/Why’ve you got everything?/Why’ve I got nothing?”), the trio harmonising as it builds to a dramatic anthemic close. A bluesier note is struck as the electric guitar makes a rare appearance; Ward takes the lead for the pulsing, ethereal Aurora, which, inspired by a friend’s baby of the same name who lives at the address ’37 Seaside’, thus prompting the imagery in lines like “She was born to the sound of the waves/Ether light runs wild down her street/As the tide rolls out with the day…Shells and seaglass for her hair/They echo light upon the sea/That dances on the ebb and flow“.
Penned by Knútur, Townes takes the lead on the forlorn fingerpicked and strings-embellished Your Love Was Death To Me, another song of a soured relationship (“Our cold embrace, an ugly war/Your kiss, my killer bee“), before the piano-accompanied, swirling dark-toned Medusa conjures the mixed emotions of having to leave those you love behind as you set off on tour (“A final view at a crowded bed/Just one more minute while I clear my head/I hear them breathing in the darkness/Taxi’s waiting in the street below“) calling on the snake-haired Medusa to turn his heart to stone to numb the pain until the return (“when I come back home/They will not embrace a stone…Thankfully I remain, flesh and bone“) as it ebbs away on a drone.
Opening with Ward on vocals before Knútur’s whisperingly husked voice offers the choruses in Icelandic, the atmospherically spooked title track provides the penultimate number inspired by the true story of a long disconnected phone that sometimes still rings, the choruses telling three tragic ghost stories of who may be calling (from 1963, 1954 and 1945) while the verses speak of summoning up the courage to answer. It ends again sung in Icelandic, this time the three adopting vocal drones to mirror the accompaniment, and again drawing on folklore with Orgar Brim, a setting of a poem about the wildness of nature by Látra-Björg, an 18th Century outcast fisherwoman whose poems were believed to cast spells on those who crossed her (a 2011 six-minute film tribute to her by Lisa Castagner, an artist from Northern Ireland, makes for an interesting visual complement).
Unanswered is an album born of serendipitous circumstances, and together, Ward Knutur Townes cast an intoxicating spell, one which we hope they will repeat.
Unanswered is released on Betty Beetroot Records on October 6, and Ward KnúturTownes will showcase it on an 18-date UK tour starting in Lucy’s home town of Derby on October 13 – a hybrid gig that is also being screened by Live To Your Living Room. https://livetoyourlivingroom.com/events/.
Find out more here: https://wardknuturtownes.com/