By 2010, Jane Weaver had already released three solo albums and had fronted two moderately successful bands: Britpop scenesters Kill Laura, and Misty Dixon, who were part of the vanguard of folktronica. But it was with her fourth solo effort, The Fallen By Watch Bird, that Weaver found what seemed like a definitive and singular voice. Here she sloughed off the more obvious psych-pop signifiers that had seen her compared with the Beatles and various Madchester bands in favour of something both more self-contained and more complex. It was with this album that she began to fashion the trancey, kraut-inspired rhythms and the expansive synth flights that came to define later career highlights, The Silver Globe (2014) and Modern Kosmology (2017), with their heady drones and post-Stereolab space-chug.
Given that Weaver’s critical stock still seems to be on the rise with every new album, a reissue of one of her formative works seems timely if somewhat risky. What if The Fallen By Watch Bird doesn’t stand the test of time? What if it pales in the shadow of those later albums many of us have come to love? Happily, those fears are soon put to bed. Even before you listen to this reissue, you are made aware of the scope and ambition of Weaver’s vision by the fact that it has been released as a lavish double, coupled with sister-album The Watchbird Alluminate (a collection of reinterpretations, aided by a varied and illustrious list of guests). And when you get around to hitting the play button and are met with an opening three-song suite that is among the finest moments of her career, you’re soon reminded why Weaver has been a fixture of critics’ end-of-year lists for the last decade and a half.
Inasmuch as it traces a single loose narrative, Watch Bird is a concept album, but it’s one that wears its concept lightly. That narrative, such as it is, is there to embellish the mood, which is one of folkloric dreaminess imbued with a sense of loss. Those first three songs introduce us to both concept and mood: the first, Europium Alluminate, is a delicate melodic tracery set atop an organic-sounding drone. It’s followed by the spoken word “A Circle and a Star”, and the title track, where Weaver’s penchant for kosmische musik emerges in the form of motorik rhythms and bubbling electronic soundscapes. Experimental it may be, but Weaver’s ear for a vocal hook – and her impressive voice – anchor it in the realm of pop. The directness of the first few seconds of Whispers of Winter is reminiscent of the Kinks (and its guitar solo, which sounds like Abbey Road-era George Harrison, is the closest this record gets to those old Beatles comparisons).
Turning In Circles filters sixties psych-folk through that same poppy gauze, a gentle acoustic guitar given room to breathe, while occasional pinpricks of xylophone introduce an element of strangeness. Its strange, detached beauty brings to mind early Broadcast. Hud A Llfrith, with its pristine melodicism and cut-glass wordless vocals, is like a combination of Vashti Bunyan and David Tibet. Listening to songs like this after so many years gives you some idea of the influence Weaver must have had, consciously or otherwise, over more recent artists like Daisy Rickman.
The hauntological elements that Weaver would come to embrace are explored here too. Noctilumina has the uncanny, fluttering simplicity of a broken music box. Even when the prevailing mood is comparatively folky, as on My Soul Was Lost, My Soul Was Lost, And No One Saved Me, the electronic elements whir away in the background, meaning that counterpoint and contrast (and the disconcerting mood they help generate) are always important.
Which is why the inclusion of The Watchbird Alluminate – originally released a year later, in 2011 – is so illuminating. It shows Weaver as an artist in constant dialogue with her own material, and always alive to the myriad potentialities of her songs, bringing the electronic, psychedelic and drone elements to the fore. Here she produces a contrast with the original album not only by employing a more experimental outlook (an opening drone that is stretched out and made mysterious by technology), but by working with a wide array of collaborators. So we have Ghost Box mainstay The Focus Group adding a spooky library music vibe to “A Circle and a Star”, and Emma Tricca leans heavily into the dreamier side of late-sixties weird folk with a stunning vocal performance on Turning in Circles.
Majic Milk forges a swirling, lysergic trajectory backed by an insistent, Roy Harper-esque strum. Wendy Flower of late-sixties folk duo Wendy and Bonnie provides a rich, characterful lead vocal on a version of Whispers of Winter that has a garage-y DIY feel. Flower also helps out on a minimal, clattering take on Silver Chord, the original album’s closing song, while My Soul Was Lost is reimagined by vocalist Magpahi as a crystalline and almost abstract artefact of wild folkiness.
Weaver is a fixture now, a keystone of the comparatively nebulous group of artists and labels that float around the ideas of folktronica, hauntology, freak folk and contemporary krautrock. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that she was a progenitor of these genres, there at the start, making records that still stand up to critical scrutiny where others may have fallen by the wayside. The Fallen By Watch Bird was arguably the first instance of her mature iteration, but it still contains traces of the ardent wildness of a young artist figuring out her own unique path. It is a crucial album in her oeuvre, and still a fantastic listen.
The Fallen By Watchbird (Expanded Edition) (January 23rd, 2026)
Pre-Order: https://janeweaver.lnk.to/TheFallenbyWatchbird
Jane Weaver & Septieme Soeur – The Fallen by Watch Bird 15th Anniversary Tour: A visionary Psych folk odyssey
09 Apr: St Lukes, Glasgow, UK
10 Apr: St Michaels Church, Liverpool, UK
11 Apr: Bristol Beacon, The Lantern, Bristol, UK
12 Apr: Moth Club, London, UK
13 Apr: Moth Club, London, UK
15 Apr: Squire Performing Arts Centre, Nottingham, UK
16 Apr: Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, UK
17 Apr: Stoller Hall, Manchester, UK
Tickets: https://janeweavermusic.com/tour