We recently shared videos for two traditional songs from Josienne Clarke: her reimagained Katie Cruel, dealing with estrangement and the realities of an uncompromising artistic life, and Banks of the Sweet Primroses which offered a record of a person trying not to disappear inside the act of being seen. We can now reveal that these standalone singles are, maybe not surprisingly, part of a larger work. The singles are taken from Regenerene MMXXVI (pronounced ree-jen-er-reen twenty-twenty-six), a 12-track album that returns to the traditional music that helped shape Clarke’s career, due out on November 20th via her own imprint, Corduroy Punk. The album’s title is taken from the Middle English regeneren: to make new flesh with the Roman numerals tying it to the present.
“The folk tradition is, or at least should be, a living organism,” Clarke says. “Expanding, contracting, evolving and adapting to an ever-changing landscape, but remaining constant in its ability to process change.”
In 2025, Clarke released Far From Nowehere, which was highly praised by Danny Neill in his album review, in which he said: “Every facet is unifying, evolving as one and thriving on the very act of being, in a way that makes this Josienne’s grandest effort to date.”
To accompany the official album announcement, we have the pleasure of premiering the video for her latest single, Green Grow The Laurels, once again directed by Alec Bowman_Clarke. The single is released tomorrow.
In his notes for the video, director Alec Bowman_Clarke writes:
“In this film for Josienne Clarke’s stark modern rendering of the traditional song Green Grow the Laurels, director Alec Bowman_Clarke removes folk music from the shelter of dusk, candlelight and haunted interiors, placing it instead beneath an obliterating summer sun. Drawing on the exposed ceremonial unease of Ari Aster’s ‘Midsommar’ and its cinematic descendants, the film offers nowhere for its subject — or its audience — to hide. There are no shadows deep enough to contain a ghost. No ruined house. No visible pursuer. Only Clarke, the landscape, and an empty wooden chair with which she appears unable to establish a stable relationship. The chair begins as furniture, becomes an obstacle, then a partner, witness and then, possibly, a ritual sacrifice. Clarke leans through it, folds herself around it and submits to positions that seem less performed than inherited. Her smile is beautiful, deliberate and faintly intolerable. Her movements drift between courtship, possession and the physical memory of something repeated long before the camera arrived. A reflected Josienne intermittently echoes the living one. Not as a supernatural double, but as another version held inside the song. The two figures never fully meet. Instead, image and reflection suggest the central violence of oral tradition: a voice may belong completely to the singer while remaining crowded with everyone who has sung before her. Bowman_Clarke treats the folk song not as an antique to be preserved, but as a structure capable of entering the body. Clarke’s sparse arrangement strips away decorative nostalgia, leaving melody, repetition and emotional contradiction exposed. Desire becomes warning. Beauty becomes pressure. The pastoral landscape, bleached by excessive light, refuses innocence. Nothing haunts Green Grow the Laurels. Nothing needs to. The song is already there.”
In 2025, Clarke shared her love of Sandy Denny through her live show: “Josienne Clarke Sings Sandy Denny”. In his live review, Danny Neill shared how her connection to the music of Sandy Denny runs deep and are far more nuanced than a mere similarity in singing voices, as undeniable as that comparison is. Those lucky enough to have caught her live show, will be pleased to know her version of Sandy Denny’s Fotheringay is also on the record.
We can also reveal that the album, arranged and performed by Clarke on voice, field organ, guitar and recorders, while stripped back, also features guests Mary Ann Kennedy on harp and Matt Robinson on additional piano and keyboards.
Links: https://josienneclarke.com/
