In 2023, the Edinburgh-based musician Ian Humberstone completed his PhD thesis on the subject of ritual language in Shetland’s fishing communities. Since then, he has been busy curating and contributing to the Ceremonial Counties tape series on Folklore Tapes, a label he helps to run. He may not be the first academic to turn his skills as an ethnographer to musical ends, but his combination of experimental folk and deep immersion in his chosen subject is uniquely compelling. It’s a direction Humberstone has been hinting at for a while: his 2017 album under the Tissø Lake pseudonym, Paths to the Foss, was a song suite directly informed by the time he spent living by a Norwegian waterfall. It was a beautiful piece of work, rooted in hard-won knowledge and genuine love for a landscape.
Midsummer Tideline feels like the synthesis of that approach. The songs were written over several years while Humberstone was researching his thesis in a remote part of Shetland, not far from the UK’s northernmost reach. They tap into landscape and seascape and the liminal, nebulous zones in between. They also engage with the lives of the people Humberstone met in the course of his studies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the repetitive but everchanging motion of the tides finds its way into many of these pieces, in particular the opening track, Over and Over, with its propulsive strum and handclaps. It sets out the album’s stall perfectly: approachable and full of a feeling of camaraderie. This is Humberstone in his singer-songwriter guise. Anyone expecting a collection of difficult or overtly experimental tunes will be in for a surprise. There are choruses, catchy melodies, and an overall folk-pop vibe.
The title track features Humberstone’s delicate guitar playing and a mournful string section. His vocal style is conversational and a little gruff, haunted perhaps by hints of Cohen, Cave, or Callahan. The elegant structure and the striking backing vocals only serve to cement those comparisons. Between Two Births has a surface sophistication, almost a jazziness, that creates a moving juxtaposition with the lyrical preoccupation with natural processes.
All this songcraft doesn’t ever dispel the notion that this is an album with wild and elemental forces at its heart. The Sea Cave paints the shoreline in a more visceral light, a place untameable and potentially dangerous in its beauty. The loping bass and rolling rhythm of A Backwash of Breakers almost seem to become one with the sea. It is an instrumental of outward serenity and hidden depths, and it gets a welcome reprise at the end of the album, complete with drones and shimmering percussion and a music-box piano melody.
There is a soft-focus, Laurel Canyon haze to Do Not Be Afraid, with its imploring refrain sung by Sarah Hayes and Emily Scott, whose backing vocals are such a defining feature of many of these songs. In fact, Midsummer Tideline is only a solo album up to a point. The contributions of Scott and Hayes (double bass and flute) are crucial, as is that of drummer Owen Curtis Williams. A string section led by Pete Harvey helps to create the album’s signature sound: it’s a pillowy, enveloping, welcoming sound, but it provides ample space for subtle musical and lyrical details.
Those details are at their most complex and beguiling on Granderi, the song where Humberstone gets closest to his day job. The title is the Shetland word for magic or witchcraft, similar to the Scots word ‘glamourie’, and the song beautifully captures the feeling that there is something almost supernatural in the enchantment of certain landscapes. Here, Humberstone carries off the very difficult skill of sounding simultaneously world-weary and wide-eyed with wonder. It works because it is sincere, and because Humberstone is both engaged and engaging. But mostly, it works because of its humanity. Given the solitude in which it was written, Midsummer Tideline is a surprisingly sociable album, full of warmth and the vigour of shared creativity, and it adds yet another string to Humberstone’s already impressive bow.
Midsummer Tideline – DVRC (Lantern Series Vol. 2)
Vinyl ships 20th February 2025: https://www.ianhumberstone.co.uk/product/midsummer-tideline-pre-order
Digital available now via Bandcamp: https://ianhumberstone.bandcamp.com/album/midsummer-tideline-2