‘Songs For The Trees’, the latest album from Kate Daisy Grant and Nick Pynn, originates from a request from storyteller Xanthe Gresham-Knight for Grant to sing a folk song about a tree every month at The Guesthouse Storyteller nights in Newhaven, the gatherings loosely based around the ancient Irish language Ogham comprising 20 characters or trees and the druidic Ogham Tree Calendar, a system of dividing the year into 13 months, each corresponding to a different tree.
From researching the existing folk songs for each tree, which tended to be, ahem, rooted in human stories, she also delved into folklore and wrote her own songs in which the trees would be the central characters. With the lyrics gathered, avant-folk musician Nick Pynn devised the arrangements, playing assorted wood and string instruments and contributing two instrumentals to the project. The pair played everything, save drums, double bass, and flute.
It aptly opens with the tremulously brief Oh Silverskin (For The Birch Tree), based around the symbolic significance of the Birch as the pilgrim tree of new beginnings, cleaning and mothering the earth, readying the soil for insects and other trees. With a strummed backing and subtle percussion, Fearn (Alder Song) is titled for the Ogham term for the Alder, a tree of protection which, when cut, “My body bleeds out crimson”, its wood used to make shields in the belief that it would sacrificially bleed in place of its bearer while Alder twigs were placed around the graves of childless women as protection from barrenness, all of which is alluded to in the lyrics, the line “bridge of the wetlands/But I will die above the ground” a reference to how it can survive underwater but can quickly decompose when removed.
Etched on mountain dulcimer and wooden flute, The Elder Mother is the first of Pynn’s two instrumentals, followed by Od’s Song (For The Ash Tree), which, taking a gospel blues approach (with a midsection deviation into Broadway musical), tells how Od, an early iteration of Odin and the consort of creation Goddess Frigg sacrificed himself on the World Tree (“The greatest god hangs from its branch”) to gift humanity poetry and prophecy in the form of the runes (“The agony of prophecy/Carved into every side”), the mention of the Wolfsnake a likely nod to the World Serpent of Norse mythology.
Arranged for scurrying, nervy piano notes, The Yew Tree On The Downs is her setting of a poem by D.H.Lawrence about a clandestine tryst, the tree associated with graveyards, death and resurrection as reflected in the brooding, dark arrangement. Another setting, this time taken from Scottish songwriter Carolina Oliphant, aka Lady Naird, The Rowan Tree plays like a gorgeous lilting lullaby folk tune with guitar and fiddle conjuring the Celtic mood.
Returning to original material, backed by drone and again with something of a Scottish air, the spooked The Shadow On The Lowlands (Willow Song) celebrates another graveyard tree with an association with weeping and sorrow (it’s also the basis of aspirin) as well as protecting the unwary traveller (“Keep your faith lost one/See clearly in the dark”), the song, soaringly delivered by Grant, speaking of how we deal with grief (“The last to lose the leaf/In fine coloured withee/My love has crossed the Lee/I hear him in the grass grow/I see him in the deep/Willow wind waly/Bring back my love to me”).
Titled for the wife of the Oak King who sets impossible tasks for would-be suitors, Queen Of May (For The Hawthorn) comes with a hollow, tribal-like percussive guitar sound and a chorus chant (“Hail fair, Queen of May/She leaves petals in her wake/Her body will not move /And you will not take”) that incorporates the tree’s Ogham name of huath. Drawing on how it’s illegal in Ireland to move these trees, the song takes on a subtext of consent and bodily autonomy (“Ne’er a prize was set so high/Never be your bride”) while again based on things Irish, the Holy Three that grows from its roots, Lonethorn, Moonthorn and Wolfcrow, is a reference to The Sceach Geal, a tree that grows in Ireland.
Operatically sung (and ululated) in Latin to Spanish guitar accompaniment, and titled for the shamanic (Irish) practice that the Catholic Church attempted to ban, where the older women of the community wail and howl to transport the soul of the deceased to the Otherworld, an album highlight, Keening Song (For the Hazel) relates to how, when her son’s killed in battle, the Goddess Brighid (repositioned as Saint Bridget) searched for his body holding a sprig of hazel (Coll).
A ‘mangled quote’ of Christ-and-Nature mystic Thomas Traherne and with a steady light swayalong rhythm, piano and fiddle, Oh, Joy, Wassail (For the Apple) is a reunion benediction (“Sceach Geal”) with some glorious poetic imagery in “When the evening is spread out where the changeling summer lies/Speak with Angels as they come spinning by/Let them call us madmen on the border line”.
Tenderly sung to fingerpicked guitar, the lilting Bring Us Back To Life (For the Oak) is perhaps the loveliest track, a call to reawakening that harks to the tree’s steadfast and protective Divine Masculinity mythology (“Gospel tree, the hero shield/Hold and bury, cloak cover me/As all long last the acorn falls/First flower will I see/Windsong ringing through the leaves/The knowing breath, the light perceives/As the morning, hope arrives/Won’t you bring us back to life”).
Dancing lightly on folksy banjo and fiddle like some harvest melody, Holly is Pynn’s second instrumental, conjuring the tree’s druidic association with magic, fairies and sprites, the album closing on a linked seasonal note with the heavy piano notes and breathy, feathery vocals of Where Do I Go From Here? (Song for the Pine), its Christmassy feel drawing on how, throughout time, people would, in Winter, hang bright and shining objects on its branches looking to entice the return of Spring, the tall trees beacons of hope in the darkness and a reassurance that all was not lost, Grant ending on the lines “See us as we are, afraid in the dark/But mantled with starlight and wonder/Where do I go from here”.
Songs for the Trees is not only one of the year’s finest albums, it’s an evergreen for the future.
Songs for the Trees (June 12th, 2025) Ogham Records
Bandcamp: https://katedaisygrant.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-the-trees-unofficial-release
Event: Bom-Bane’s ‘A Night With The Trees’ – Brighton – 26th and 27th June, 8pm https://bom-banes.com/may-fringe-bom-binge/