‘Coming Home’ is Cara Dillon’s bravest and most personal record to date. Featuring entirely original material, including spoken poetry, it’s a serene, ethereal, and lyrical landscape in which to spend time.
It’s been over six years since the release of Cara Dillon’s last studio album, ‘Wanderer’ (2017), although her first and only live album, ‘Live at Cooper Hall’ (2021), kept us going through the back end of the pandemic. A year earlier, in March 2020, unable to tour, meet with other musicians, or go home to see her family back in Northern Ireland due to the first lockdown, Dillon started rising at dawn. Unlike her younger self, in a house full of older teenage siblings, she didn’t stand outside the bedrooms of her three children and wake everyone with her tin whistle, instead, she sat alone in the garden in quiet contemplation, listening to the birds singing through the deserted Somerset landscape, watching the sun rise, and writing freely, just for herself. Her expression of these reflections on the shape and meaning of life, her place in a long line of family history, and her role in the lives of her own children took the form of poetry, and, once eventually shared with her husband and musical partner Sam Lakeman, ten of them became the tracks we hear on ‘Coming Home’, her eighth studio album.
Since the early 2000s, Dillon has enchanted listeners all the way from the UK to China and New Zealand, and has been previously described by KLOF Mag as “one of those rare talents you only come across a handful of times in your whole life”, with a voice that is “staggeringly beautiful”. It has won her countless awards and accolades over the decades, including three BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, the Meteor Music Award for Best Irish Female, and Tatler’s Woman of the Year in Music Award, as well as capturing the attention of Disney. Surprisingly, though, despite all this, Dillon has always lacked confidence in her songwriting abilities, generally focusing more on producing exquisite new interpretations of traditional material. ‘Coming Home’, which is pathbreaking not only in that it predominantly consists of spoken poetry but also because it comprises entirely original material, proves these uncertainties to be altogether unfounded. It is clear from the very first listen that we can add “exceptional lyricist” to the long list of Cara Dillon’s gifts, which may have been passed down to her but which she has also nurtured and cultivated to the very highest degree. Effortlessly interweaving speech and song, ‘Coming Home’ is by far Dillon’s bravest and most personal record, and it is a rare privilege to travel with her through these deeply moving, existential explorations of family, culture, and history.
The album kicks off with ‘Clear The Path’, the first single shared from the record in October 2023 and one of its most musically and lyrically poignant tracks. The idea came to Dillon when she was weeding in her garden – quite literally clearing the path. Dillon transforms a mundane, tedious activity into a profound reflection on the need to make way for, and connect with, the memories of our ancestors (“Speak of them/ Search for them”), serving as a microcosm for the rest of the record by creating her very own oral tradition. This gentle opener, with Dillon’s spoken words initially accompanied only by Lakeman on piano, crescendos powerfully and unexpectedly, with the addition of strings by Duncan Chisholm and Caroline Lavelle, as well as Nick Pini’s electric bass. Dillon implores us to better know our ancestors in order to have a clearer vision of ourselves, since “We are the daughters/ Of women that we will become”, a message that could not be any more perfectly illustrated than by the fact that Dillon’s daughter, Elizabeth, adds her own enchanting voice to the backing vocals (no prizes for guessing the origins of that…).
A track which explores similar themes a little later in the album is ‘Daughter’, instantly recognisable by the most beautiful piano introduction on the whole record from Lakeman, who is, as ever, quietly formidable, later picking up electric guitar and keyboards, as well as percussion on other tracks. With musical echoes of ‘The Tern and the Swallow’ (from Wanderer, 2017), this is the record’s strongest nod to Dillon’s previous work, but she soon captivates anew with poetry and sung choruses backed not only by Elizabeth but also by one of her two sons, Colm. Fittingly, then, ‘Daughter’ is a humbling acknowledgement that history does not start and end with our existence but that we are simply at the confluence of many generations’ worth of stories. Children, in turn, represent the features of their ancestors all “stitched together at the seams”, continuing to carry traces of the past through their own lives. The sung refrain, “We’ve been waiting for you for a long time”, represents not only the expectations pinned onto children when they are born but also the need to pay homage to those who have gone before, whose stories are waiting to be voiced and heard.
‘Giving’ was also released as a single in February and, through it, Dillon explores the tradition, instilled into her by her mother, of never letting someone leave the house without a gift for the road. “Give anything, but give”, she told Dillon as a child, and these gifts have ranged from coins to casseroles. The poetry here transcends generations, flowing between the gift-giving values of her big-hearted mother, to the cherished trinkets of feathers and pebbles brought to Dillon by her own children whilst on woodland walks, representing “a handful of memories”. Lakeman’s soothing accompanying guitar is once again complemented by strings as the song reaches its climax, reinforcing the theme of “coming home” – not just literally, from Dillon’s family walks in the forest, but also spiritually, since traditions like these make Dillon feel a connection with her native Northern Ireland, even when she is not physically there.
Speaking of giving, Dillon’s mother, Teresa, now in her early nineties, has apparently always been renowned for her inimitable soda bread scones, a traditional Irish delicacy that dominated Dillon’s childhood. Some of her happiest memories were made in her mother’s kitchen, the beating heart of the household, where big family announcements were made and grandchildren brought home for the first time, all accompanied by the irresistible aroma of baking. ‘Apron Strings’ musically reflects these cheerful childhood hours spent in the kitchen with a quirky, light-hearted waltz accompaniment provided by Lakeman on acoustic guitar, Chisholm on fiddle, and Pini on the double bass. In her book, ‘Coming Home’, which she has written to accompany the release of the album, Dillon reflects on what an important connection her mother is to her past, and how she had a seminal influence on the album, not only in terms of the childhood memories she helped to create for Dillon, but also through the countless hours of phone conversations they shared during lockdown, discussing family history and Dillon’s late father, Frank. Few tracks give us, as listeners, a better sense of what “home” entails for Dillon than this one.
The titular track, ‘Coming Home’, is suitably positioned at the very heart of the album and was inspired by a phone conversation with her father twenty years ago; when feeling homesick on a tour of New Zealand, Dillon called her parents, and her father suggested she “just come on home” if she was feeling so sad. Although she didn’t follow his advice at the time, the words stuck with her and brought her great comfort, and make up the soaring refrain, “Won’t you come on home?” which builds in volume and intensity at the end of each chorus, backed by piano and strings, as well as electric guitar from Petter Ericson Stakee. On one level, this is an expression of the price a musician pays for their craft, which is to be away from home an awful lot, but it also has deeper importance for Dillon, who is always being asked by her family when she will return to her native Ireland. Much of Dillon’s previous work explores Ireland’s long history of emigration (‘The Leaving Song’ [2017] and ‘The Emigrant’s Farewell’ [2003], to name just a couple), and the album’s third track, ‘Mysteries’, delves into the traditional desire to return to Ireland at the end of life. It derives from the story of her paternal grandmother, who heard the footsteps of her brother returning home to the mountains days before she received a telegram to say that he had passed away in America. The song also explores the vital tradition of the ‘blessed candle’ in Ireland (“I found a candle and I lit it for you”), lit during seminal life events such as travelling, deaths, ill health, and births, including the premature births of her twin sons in 2006, when even strangers back home in Ireland prayed and lit candles for them. Listening to the album by candlelight isn’t something I have yet tried, but I can imagine it would only enhance what is already a rather powerful spiritual experience.
Dillon has always had a fascination with things that cannot be rationally explained and devotes two tracks to exploring themes of natural healing. Her mother swore by nettle soup to “cleanse the blood”, while her father ordered Poitín – Irish moonshine – to rub onto his aching joints. Dillon devotes one track, ‘Carrageen Moss’, to an Irish seaweed which she was given in milk puddings as a child and which she developed a new fascination with during lockdown. Although there are comic undertones to the way Dillon tells the story of her lockdown Carrageen Moss obsession, the poetry speaks to a deeper and more serious desire, both personally and within her culture more broadly, to turn to nature for help with stubborn pains and ailments. This is also reflected in ‘The Well’, the album’s understated penultimate track, which explores a pre-Christian well situated in a twelfth-century Austinian Priory near her native Dungiven that is believed to have healing properties. Dillon is interested in paying homage not only to the well itself, and others like it across the country, but also to the women in her past who fought hard to protect these sacred spaces. The haunting refrain, “No one knows us like you do,” speaks up for these brave women and emphasises the importance of preserving such special and peaceful places that connect us to our past.
For me, the most powerful track on the album is ‘Inishowen’. Dillon has never shied away from exploring difficult and upsetting aspects of Ireland’s troubled history through her music, as songs such as ‘There Were Roses’ (2003) testify to. Although she feels she was sheltered from the majority of the turmoil during The Troubles, Dillon acknowledges the worry and heartache endured by her parents’ generation. ‘Inishowen’ gives a shocking insight into some of the aspects of life that became normality during her childhood in Country Derry, such as the soldiers and Land Rovers patrolling the streets, the police barracks, and the lookout towers. On the one hand, it deals with the anxiety she felt going through the border checkpoint on their way to holiday in the Inishowen peninsula, fearing her father would be taken away by the soldiers who searched them. This is represented musically by the spiky, staccato piano accompaniment intercepting the ominous guitar, giving a gritty feel as Dillon speaks of “leaving behind the tangle of barbed wire/ For a tangle of yellow gorse”. On the other side of the border crossing, however, is a sense of immense relief – “freedom barefoot on the sand” – as Dillon and her family enjoyed the beautiful landscape before having to return home to reality.
Despite – or, perhaps, because of – its dark past, Dillon is immensely proud to be from Dungiven. This is in part due to the strong sense of community which has grown out of enduring troubled times. The record’s final track, ‘White Sheets’, is devoted to the community of women there who rallied together to help each other out, often sitting around Dillon’s mother’s kitchen table to share their problems and lean on one another. In times of darkness in her own life, Dillon draws strength from the resilience of these women who had “Time for all of us/ To listen over and over again”. Although many of them are no longer still alive, she views them and her own mother as “beacons”, keeping her grounded and connecting her indelibly to home. This sense of “coming home”, reflected throughout the album, comes to an apt musical climax in the form of the unmistakable Irish sound of the uilleann pipes, masterfully played by Mike McGoldrick.
When Dillon was strongly encouraged by loved ones to share her words with the world, she initially envisioned printing them onto pamphlets to sell on the merch stalls of her gigs. A noble idea but far too modest an ambition for such precious work. Time can be the enemy of physical mementoes like these; even the most cherished postcards can slide into the dust under fridges, slip out of pockets into puddles, and fall foul to any number of beverage-based mishaps. In their musical settings, however, Dillon’s words are as timeless as their message: that we all need to take a little more time out amidst the constant bustle of modernity to appreciate all those who have gone before, from whom we have inherited all the eclectic jigsaw puzzle pieces that make us who we are. I, for one, can think of few better ways to do so than by immersing oneself in the serene, ethereal, lyrical landscape that is ‘Coming Home’.
‘Coming Home’ will be released on 15th March 2024.
Bandcamp: https://caradillon.bandcamp.com/album/coming-home
Book, CD & Vinyl available here: https://www.caradillon.co.uk/shop
Details of Cara Dillon’s spring album tour can be found here.