From the Ground

Nature now can be attributed as a band member on albums and songs, and it should see royalties pour down like silver. There’ll be a few royalties due with the release of this nature-soaked concept album from The Shee’s Laura-Beth Salter and Treacherous Orchestra’s Ali Hutton. It begins with the shimmering, tremulous airs of ‘The 11th Hour’ – an hour we must all feel familiar with, collectively – while the title-track is an epic call to action in the face of the hot, arid airs of climate emergency. ‘Boreal’ is a powering instrumental named after the great boreal forests of the world’s north, while the nine-minute ‘Broken Shores’ is a more reflective instrumental, with beautiful details opening out of its wider vistas. Guest turns come from fiddler Patsy Reid, bassist Duncan Lyall and drummer Paul Jennings, as well as from the forces of nature herself – ‘whistling winds from Skye, crashing waves from Harris… sounds of the forest’ on Glasgow’s outskirts – and snatches of spoken word from poet Jim Mackintosh, Gaelic singer Kim Carnie and others. It’s an evocation of nature, but it’s more than that too, an encapsulation of the immense tides of natural forces that sustain us – and that may come to condemn us.