Sometimes, music has an intangible quality that is extremely difficult to pin down in the confines of a conventional review. We find ourselves reaching for words that don’t really mean much – fleeting, nebulous, ghostly – but are all that we can offer in the face of a work of art that holds our attention in mysterious or inscrutable ways. I remember first hearing Sibylle Baier’s mesmerising collection Colour Green – recorded in the early 1970s but not released until 2006 – and thinking how difficult it would be to review, how the language of criticism would almost certainly fail to do it justice.
I get a similar sort of feeling listening to Come Into the Garden, the new EP from Natalie Wildgoose. She starts with a brief piano-led song, simply called Introduction. The notes seem to be going nowhere, but really, they are going everywhere all at once, falling like water, pooling in the dusty corners of the song. The melody is an impressionistic thing, like an idea of a dream committed to music. This is part of Wildgoose’s magic. The other part comes from her singing and how it is presented: it is delicate and feels almost disconcertingly close, but at the same time, there is a sense of decay, of age. It’s like listening quietly to an old radio turned down low and pressed against your ear while rain falls outside.
This effect is no accident. Wildgoose recorded the EP on analogue tape from her grandfather’s old reel-to-reel, and even before you know this, you can feel the weight of history vying with the lightness of the melodies in these songs. Hand Me a Piece of Your Heart bears a passing resemblance to Adrianne Lenker’s recent solo album, full of emotional heft lightly borne, but Wildgoose’s artistic vision is entirely her own, and elements of the landscapes and cityscapes of Yorkshire and London creep into her songwriting, with a fragility and tenderness that recalls Vashti Bunyan or, more recently, Clara Mann.
Her imagery has a strangeness that mirrors the discombobulating quality of her music. Rabbits chase each other up walls in I Lingered, while bees sip, honey drips and unexpected backing vocals give the song a gentle nudge in the direction of surrealism. The DIY nature of the recording is most evident on Blackberries, with its tape-warped acoustic guitar giving a domestic scene a delightfully oneiric aspect. Most of the EP gives the impression of sweetness and thickness (it’s not surprising that she sings about honey). Angel is practically gelatinous. It lasts barely two minutes, but you feel as if you have been submerged in its deliciously sticky soundworld for much longer.
The title track is even more engaging. The sparest of piano arrangements provides the skeleton for a deceptively complex lyric about love, memory, landscape and pain. It’s almost unbearably beautiful. When the tape hiss finally fades out, you are left surprised by the harshness of the silence it leaves behind, craving an instant return to the strange world Wildgoose conjures, submerged in sweet, subtle sound and rich in the unlearnable language of dream and memory.
Come Into the Garden (March 6th, 2025)
Stream: https://nataliewildgoose.ffm.to/comeintothegardenep
Bandcamp: https://nataliewildgoose.bandcamp.com/album/come-into-the-garden
