An Introduction
Our latest Off the Shelf guest is Anna McLuckie. KLOF Mag readers will recall that her latest album, The Little Winters, was a recent Featured Album of the Month. Reviewed by Thomas Blake, he set the scene so well that it’s worth repeating here as an introduction:
While there are currently more clàrsach players than ever before, the majority seem to stick to the instrument’s traditional repertoire. Edinburgh-born Anna McLuckie is an exception. She is keen to explore the clàrsach’s possibilities from a songwriter’s perspective, but she does so with a wide range of influences at her back. On her 2021 debut, Today, Everyday, she combined melodically complex songs with a pop singer’s lightness of touch. In places, it had the delicate feel of birdsong, but always with a sense of control that showed just how deeply connected she was with her instrument and its heritage.
The Little Winters goes further in every direction. It sees McLuckie making advances as a musician and a songwriter, but also in terms of her overarching creative vision. She brings in even more influences and consolidates them with a refreshing economy. And the album is thematically and lyrically ambitious too. The lead single Bitten Winter Skin is a keenly-felt meditation on the Gaelic concept of cianalas, similar to the Welsh idea of hiraeth, a feeling of nostalgia or yearning for a particular place. The song does a very difficult thing: it captures an emotion that is almost impossible to describe in words. This is where the clàrsach comes in, or rather McLuckie’s evident mastery of it. It’s an inherently nostalgic instrument, and she knows exactly how to harness that nostalgia without ever coming across as forced or cloying.
He concludes: 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.
Off the Shelf with Anna McLuckie
First Ever Passport
This was my first ever passport. Ironically, growing up, we rarely ever flew anywhere by plane; our summer holidays mainly consisted of these ‘magical mystery tour’ car journeys around the UK.
The picture of a tiny me in a tent foreshadows the future me who still loves to get under canvas. I’ve always fancied myself a wee bit of an explorer, and I still find any opportunity to get out and pitch up whenever I can. I find sleeping outside in the open to be such a huge reset and is my favourite way to escape London.
Mister God This Is Anna
The book I was named after, which inspired my song ‘Mister God’ from my most recent album. My Mum originally bought it for my Dad back in the Christmas of ’91, and then she read it herself when she was pregnant with me.
The book’s story is about a runaway kid called ‘Anna’ who was found on the streets of London by a teenager called Fynn. Anna is a very curious kid who has a very unusual understanding of ‘god’ and religion in general. I think the book is intended to shine a light on the idea of spirituality being something that doesn’t have to be organised, and that’s something that really speaks to me.
When I wrote the lyrics for my song, it came out in a sort of frenzied prayer-like splurge. I needed some way of pinning it all together, something to make it more cohesive and songlike. I’m not religious, but I felt that if the prayer were to any God it would have to be to Anna’s ‘Mister God’.
Aggressively Scottish Stools
I inherited these two stools from my Grandad on my Mum’s side. I find the fact that the stools are so beautiful yet the inscriptions so threatening, quite funny and very Scottish. As a kid I used to sit on them and play the Clàrsach, but sadly they no longer hold my weight. One of them lives with me in London whilst the other is still at my childhood home in Edinburgh. My London stool (image on the right), says “nemo me impune lacessit” which is Latin for “no one provokes me with impunity” and the one in Scotland (on the left), says “wa daur meddle wi me” which is Scots for “who dares mess with me”, a variation of the same saying. This is a famous Scottish motto and also the motto for the Order of the Thistle.
I have no idea how my Grandad came to have them, but I find them very telling of his character. Born in the borders of Scotland, he was the most nationalistic and proud Scot I ever knew. He spent a lot of time teaching us Scottish ceilidh dancing as children, and I’ve adopted his signature ‘yeeooooww’ (often accompanied by a knee slap) for moments of joy and musical appreciation.
Map Lamp
On top of the previously mentioned stool lives my map lamp, also belonging to my Grandad. When I left Scotland for university, I cut up an old Glasgow street map and covered the lampshade in it. I was born in Glasgow, and I guess, in a cheesy way, I liked that idea that when you turn the light on you can see outlines of the very first streets I walked.
Jay Bird Mask
A mask I made out of clay and tinfoil for the artwork for my single ‘Jay Bird’. I got the idea for the mask after going to see an exhibition by Paula Rego in Lisbon where she was displaying some initial drawings for her Jay Bird theatre costumes. I loved how the masks she made were birdlike yet didn’t hide the fact that they were being worn by a human. For my artwork, I wanted to create an image that seemed to be me yet not me, or a bird yet not a bird. The mask really should have been made from paper mache, as the clay I used weighs a ton and now very much just lives on the shelf!
Old school trunk
An old school trunk which has been passed down the family, originally belonging to my Granny. It’s hugely impractical as it’s very heavy and no longer has handles, but it’s managed to come with me from house to house.
It has been many things over the years, from the best spot for hide-and-seek to being my wardrobe during university. It now has all of my music things in it: my tune books, sheet music, and old gig posters, etc.
Miniatures
I’ve always been a bit of a collector of tiny things. As a child, I famously only played with rocks and twigs, so my Mum got me a wee shelving unit so that I could categorise them all. As an adult, my collection has remained strong, and this miniature shelf shows off the very tiniest. The Mexican worry dolls used to live under my pillow; the idea is that you whisper your worries to them before you go to sleep, and the dolls consume all your greatest fears and banish them away.
New York Painting
For some of 2018 I lived in New York City whilst doing an internship. I was working as a music promoter and helping put on small shows in unique venues. Whilst I was there, I had the idea to invite live artists to the shows to make work in response to the music being performed. This painting is from that first show we did, and was made using a straw to blow the paint across the canvas. I love it because I think the shape looks like a sound-wave and the colours bring me straight back to listening to that finger-picking guitarist in a loft in Chinatown. At the time of the show I was skint (boo unpaid internships) and couldn’t afford to buy the art myself; sadly someone else bought it from the audience. The next day, I turned up to work, and the artist was at the door of the office holding the painting. He said whoever had originally bought it had decided they wanted to give it to me as they had heard that I hadn’t been able to buy one.
Cork-Cork Board
I got the idea to make a cork board out of corks through my friend Carys. At that point I had just moved to London and had nowhere to live, so I was staying in Carys’ room while she was away. I spent many hours on my laptop staring up at her board whilst I applied for houses, jobs, friends, meanings! I made mine with all the corks I collected when working in a music venue called The Jamboree in London. Working at the bar there was my first job after moving, and it is how I met a lot of the people from the folk scene, so it remains a special place to me.
I like to cover my board in whatever inspires me at that time: art, postcards, quotes, objects, etc. At the moment, I’m collecting things to do with weather changes, storms, and seascapes!
Piles of Notebooks
I’ve always been a scribbler, and consistently have multiple notebooks on the go. I tend to always have a boring one, an emotional one, one for songs and poems, and more recently one for dreams. There’s also the less frequent but highly treasured travel diaries that I fill with daily entries, ticket scraps and stamps. For me, writing is the easiest way to express myself, and it helps me keep my feelings in order. I like to think of them as the physical manifestations of my brain, and, as I often find my brain quite a disorganised, erratic place to be, the notebooks act as a solution to this.
When writing songs, I always start with the words first, and these notebooks are the first place I look. My favourite bits from the notebooks get torn out and then make their way onto the cork-cork board pictured above. At this point, the board gets taken off my bedroom wall and into my garden studio where it becomes my songwriting Mecca.
The Little Winters is out now on Hudson Records
Order: https://hudsonrecords.ffm.to/thelittlewinters