Last year, Lancashire songwriter Toria Wooff released her impressive self-titled debut, which Danny Neill reviewed for KLOF. Describing the album as sophistically cultivated, he offered a prediction in his conclusion: “The maturity on show here absolutely points to even more interesting creativity and artistic development further down the line.” He wasn’t wrong.
Wooff has announced her new album, Aleister, due for release via Sloe Flower Records on January 12th, 2027, which explores the heavy themes of grief, obsessive-compulsive disorder, infertility, and recovery. Our first taster is its lead single, The Morrigan, named after a powerful figure in Celtic mythology. “The inspiration from this song came from the theory that for centuries voices heard in the woods, which people would believe to be ghosts, deities, Gods could actually all be down to crows repeating human voices,” Wooff explains.
The accompanying video, directed by Manchester-based Light In The Tower, draws on the 1970s folk-horror landscape. The accompanying press describes the song as folk tradition colliding with gothic literature, northern landscapes brushing against the occult, and deeply personal experiences sitting alongside ancient mythology. All those elements are brilliantly rendered here:
The album cover, featuring Wooff standing outside Popty, the Welsh cottage she and producer James Wyatt disappeared to with microphones and guitar for inspiration, could be a gothic rendering of Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day. Although she may confess to taking inspiration from British and Irish folk recordings of the late sixties and seventies, she doesn’t lean into nostalgia. What I didn’t realise is that Wooff is also a surrealist painter, and the shared themes between her writing and painting overlap throughout the album; peculiar shapes and colours are conjured and burst into life. This is one we’re really looking forward to.
Stream/Pre-Order: https://ffm.to/toriawooff-themorrigan