The Pendulum Swing

Katherine Priddy’s sophomore set is an intimate, emotive, interconnected album of tableaux that encompasses the past, and past loves, and family and the future – the pendulum swing of the title – each acutely, sensitively observed from the roving centre of a nomadic musician’s perspective.

There are emotive meditations on family (‘Walnut Shell’ is for her twin brother, while ‘Father of Two’ is a song to make her dad cry and ‘First House on the Left’ evokes a family home through a deeper sense of time); on relationships and break-up (‘These Words of Mine’, ‘Does She Hold You Like I Did’, ‘Anyway, Always’ and album highlight ‘Ready to Go’) and desire, whether for a lover on ‘Northern Sunrise’, or a particular kind of domestic bliss on ‘A Boat on the River’. They are beautifully written, sung and played, with a dazzling poetic deftness and concision embedded in Priddy’s strong melodies and close-to-the-ear vocals. ‘I weave tapestries from similes, sew my words like flower seeds,’ she sings on ‘These Words of Mine’, and this is a set bestrewn with brilliant blooms, climbing out of the shade, into the light, each of them touching the heart and firing the mind. It’s sure to be one of the albums of 2024.