It seems like a simple formula: disappearance as a catalyst for creation. When something is erased, it leaves a gap, a lacuna. When the thing that is erased was perceived as valuable, art steps in to fill the void, to act as a reminder or a recreation of what we have lost. But it’s not always that cut-and-dried: some artists have what it takes – the foresight or the bravery – to step in while the act of erasure is still occurring, and this is where we see the art of protest and resistance at its most formidable. This principle lies at the heart of The Lost Words, a 2017 book with text by Robert Macfarlane and illustrations by Jackie Morris, created in response to the Oxford Junior Dictionary’s decision to omit certain words – bluebell, acorn, wren – from its latest edition, replacing them with new entries like chatroom or broadband. Morris and Macfarlane saw it as an opportunity to remind people of the beauty and importance of words, but more than that, they wanted to spread awareness of the things those words represent, plants and creatures whose numbers are in troubling decline.
That same principle of creative resistance inspired the formation of Spell Songs, a seven-strong musical collective who use traditional and contemporary songs and compositions to bring those words and the concepts behind them back to life. Their first album, a musical accompaniment to Morris and Macfarlane’s first book, came out in 2019. They have just released their third record, In Thin Air, which responds to the most recent Morris and Macfarlane collaboration, The Book of Birds.
Illustrator Jackie Morris and singer/multi-instrumentalist Karine Polwart agreed to talk to KLOF about the new album – and the accompanying tour, on which Morris joins the band on stage and creates paintings in a live setting – and both were keen to emphasise the importance of music in highlighting ecological concerns, and more generally in the act of protest. As Morris says, ‘music has the power to thread an idea deep into the soul and a way of holding the human brain to remember. It is often easier to remember a lyric when attached to music. This makes music a powerful medium as a catalyst for change and is why, during times of oppression, musicians are often arrested, tortured and killed.’
It might seem like a downbeat way to begin an interview, but these are – politically and ecologically speaking – desperate times. When asked if art has a duty to highlight social and political issues, Morris’s answer is short and unequivocal: ‘Yes.’ Polwart expands on the same question: ‘Like Jackie, I feel a sense of compulsion to do this as an individual maker, but I’m not sure art emerges from a place of duty. It’s just as legitimate to make things to escape, comfort, dance, laugh – all of which can be forms of resistance too, of course – as it is to question, document or resist explicitly. But I do think more of us, simply as humans, need to step up to greater ethical, political and social engagement, at a time when no-one is otherwise coming to save us or the cultures and ecosystems that capitalism is devastating.’
So how does this tie into the more specific ecological and environmental concerns that Spell Songs have always highlighted? And why is folk music so well-suited to expressing those concerns? ‘There’s a long tradition in Scottish folk song that connects to place and belonging, land and sea,’ says Polwart. ‘Mythic ballads are threaded through with shapeshifting birds and creatures. Laments of exile and longing speak of deep ecological intimacy and loss. Historic lullabies of greater-than-human life, like the historic text which forms the basis of Julie’s gorgeous Taladh Nan Eun (Lullaby of the Birds). There’s also a rich heritage in Scottish, English and Irish folksong of resistance and dissent. So I guess that makes ecology and biodiversity loss feel like natural extensions.’
In Thin Air focuses specifically on birdlife, and the historical connection between birds and humans is long and often complex. Of all the band members, Polwart has a particular affinity with birds and birdwatching. ‘I’m possibly the most ‘birdy’ of the Spell Songs band members, in that I do spend a fair amount of time out walking the North Sea coast with a pair of binoculars or a magnifying glass,’ she says. ‘The album project did allow me to make a dream boat trip to the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth with a small team of ecologists from the Scottish Seabird Centre in East Lothian. This iconic rock is one of the largest Northern Gannet colonies in the world and is now owned by the RSPB. Not many folk get a chance to land on it and sit for a few hours amongst the clattering throng of a hundred thousand blue-eyed seabirds. Such an unforgettable, visceral experience.’
Morris expresses her relationship with birds in a slightly different way. For her, birds are a part of a kind of wider everyday magic, not commodities or items to be ticked off a list. ‘I do not understand the idea of ‘birdwatching’. I have always been entranced by the lives of birds, seen them, had my eye snagged by their flight, gone searching for their company, their song, threaded them through my work.’
Certainly, birds are threaded through the new album, with every song focusing on a different aspect of avian life. As Polwart explains it: ‘The album responds to The Book of Birds, which is structured around what [Macfarlane and Morris] call the Seven Wonders of Bird: nest, egg, beak, song, feather, flight and migration. As a band we made a decision to maintain this structural arc.’ Beyond that initial structural element, the music was written and recorded in a largely conventional – if openly collaborative – way: ‘Most of the writing of the album itself came together in a week-long residency in Wales.’
Polwart, it seems, enjoys this way of working with a broad theme in mind. ‘Personally, I find it helpful and generative to have a zone of enquiry. All of my music and writing begins with a theme or image, a story or a question at its heart.’ She also relished another chance to work alongside Morris and Macfarlane. ‘This is our third studio album inspired by Jackie and Rob’s beautiful, thought-provoking work and they’re always hugely generous and trusting in allowing us creative freedom to respond as we wish. Jackie was in the room with us throughout the entire writing and composing process in Pembrokeshire last year, painting and witnessing, observing and feeding back. It’s a pretty special energy to have around.’
The framework created by The Book of Birds meant that the band worked in a slightly different way this time around. For Polwart, this became an important part of the group’s evolution. ‘I think the structural device of The Seven Wonders of Bird creates a sense of a musical journey. There’s definitely a more collaborative, improvisatory quality to many of the tracks, and more storytelling in sound rather than song. To me, we feel more like a band on this record than a collective of individual voices.’ This evolution from a collection of parts to a single musical entity was more important to the creation of the album than any individual influences. ‘With seven distinctive composers and singers in the Spell Songs band, there are already lots of different musical worlds and ideas in the room from Seckou [Keita]’s West African rhythms to Julie [Fowlis]’s Gaelic mimesis. For me, this album is perhaps our most sympathetic fusion of these disparate elements so far and has made much more of the band’s capacity for instrumental and sonic storytelling, incantation and vocal layering, as well as discrete songs.’
I put it to Polwart that it must be difficult for seven musicians to juggle successful solo careers with the extra workload of recording and touring with a band…
‘Ha! Ask our wonderful creative and production team about that! It’s certainly not easy to gather such a bustling, multi-headed organism in one space or even just get us all to respond to emails in good time. But we are patiently and creatively supported by Adam and Caroline Slough who produce Spell Songs and by Andy Bell on studio and live engineering and record production. Andy’s Sheffield-based label Hudson Records has also released the album.’
One of the most challenging aspects of planning a tour was the question of how to integrate Morris into the band’s live show. As she explains: ‘It was difficult for a long while to work out what my place on stage with the musicians would be. Obviously the music grew from the words and images of The Book of Birds. Finding a way to add to a performance by such a mighty group wasn’t easy. Learning painting as a performance to enrich and not distract, not easy. So my idea was to work towards migration. Seven shows, seven musicians, seven wonders, seven paintings each of seven godwits, so that at the end there would be a suit of paintings that sang with the music, painted throughout the performance.’
It’s a highly original approach to stagecraft, and one that involves a combination of improvisation and attention to detail. This attention to detail runs right through the band’s working practice at every level, down to the presentation of their physical releases. In Thin Air is being released on vinyl and as a deluxe edition CD set, and Polwart has definite opinions about the importance of physical media. ‘The Spell Songs project is born from a collaboration between a writer and a visual artist and has such a strong visual sensibility that it demands a tangible, visual representation. All of our albums, but most especially this one, are gorgeous tactile objects, with beautiful illustration and design and additional writing from the whole band. I hope this enriches how the music is received and understood by listeners. On a pragmatic survival level also, most of us understand now that musicians make virtually nothing from streaming platforms. It’s an ongoing low blow to all but a tiny elite. So crafting our albums as books and art objects is also a form of creative resistance to the commercial devaluation of music-making.’
Creative resistance is at the heart of everything the Spell Songs collective do. The music they create – and the written words that inspire it – represent the possibility of real, positive change. It’s not wholly true to say that erasure leaves a void; sometimes it leaves a scar, the evidence of genuine harm. The songs and the visual art that Spell Songs make might just be the most effective way of healing some of these scars.
Spell Songs also feature in our latest Mixtape here.
In Thin Air is out now on Hudson Records
Available on Digital/CD/Vinyl, including Deluxe CD Box & Limited Edition Deluxe CD Box (details here)
Pre-Order/Save: https://hudsonrecords.ffm.to/inthinair