Shivelight

‘Shivelight’ is the light that dances and dapples through a canopy of trees; something that captures the essence of the elusive modern folk music of Mishaped Pearls. The word was coined by the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and is of a piece with the general air of considered and poetic reflection that permeates the collective's fourth studio album.

The creative engine is multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Ged Flood, who penned seven of these tracks on weighty subjects including the miseries of life in the modern Middle East, our environmental impact on the oceans, and his own grandmother's efforts to promote a free Ireland. Also central to their sound is the mezzo-soprano voice of Manuela Schuette.

The pair are joined by violinist Laurel S Pardue, pianist Andrew Sleightholme, percussionist Calie Hough, bassist Massimo Troiani and strings player Tom Finigan on delicate originals and reworkings of traditional folk songs that are rhythmically inventive and full of atmospheric instruments from other regions, such as the Turkish bağlama lute and the West African djembé drum. The whole is ethereal, serious and very particular, in a way that is not unlike the Victorian poetry from which its title springs.