Anna McLuckie has shared a video for Blackberry Love, the opening track from her album The Little Winters, released on April 24th, 2026 via Hudson Records. The video was filmed by Lucy McLuckie.
McLuckie plays the clàrsach, the Gaelic harp with roots stretching back some 1,300 years, and she is among a wave of contemporary players treating it as a songwriter’s tool rather than sticking to its traditional repertoire. The Little Winters is her second album, following 2021’s Today, Everyday.
Blackberry Love opens the record with a kind of incantation. Reviewing the album for KLOF, Thomas Blake wrote: “Opener Blackberry Love lists the five plants – Redbud, Dogwood, Locust, Blackberry and Britches – like a kind of spell. It’s a practical magic, but all the more enchanting for it.”
The album takes its title from an American term for the late, unexpected frosts of spring; McLuckie builds much of the record around the plants that flourish in their wake.
The Little Winters was a KLOF Featured Album of the Month, and in his review Blake concluded: “The Little Winters is an album worthy of the clàrsach, with all its historical and cultural importance, and Anna McLuckie, with her clear voice, poetic songwriting and precise, fluid playing, has announced herself as one of British folk music’s most formidable talents.”
McLuckie also recently featured in our Off the Shelf series, talking through inherited Scottish stools, a mask made for the Jay Bird artwork, and the notebooks where her songs, including Blackberry Love, first take shape — a series that pairs neatly with an album so rooted in plant life and place.
Read our full review of The Little Winters, and the Off the Shelf feature.
The Little Winters (April 24th, 2026) Hudson Records
Order: https://hudsonrecords.ffm.to/thelittlewinters