What Holds the World Together

Based in Sheffield, The Wilderness Yet – Rosie Hodgson on vocals, Rowan Piggott on fiddle and vocals, and flautist-guitarist Philippe Barnes, also on vocals – promptly leapt to the forefront of contemporary folk trios with their eponymous debut in 2020. It was closely followed by an EP called John O’ Dreams, while lockdown saw them record a winter album/show called Turn the Year Around.

Moving briskly on, this immersive new album seems to embody not only our relationships with the natural world but also documents some deeply personal links, from ‘The Last Shanachie’, which features the remnants of a wax cylinder recording of Piggott’s great-great-grandfather, a traditional Irish storyteller, to ‘The Nightingale Lullaby’, a becalming piece written to lull Rowan and Hodgson’s newborn son to sleep. Setting out their imaginative stall straightaway, opener ‘Wild Northeaster’ sets a poem by Charles Kingsley, ‘Ode to the North-East Wind’ to a traditional Irish slip-jig, ‘The Blast of Wind’. Standout tracks are the fiddle-led ‘Charlie Fox’, an exploration of fox-hunting from the perspective of the hunted, and the self-penned title-track, which tempers darkness with hope as it relates the encouraging story of a village in India where adjusted attitudes to natural environments have resulted in a decline in both rates of infanticide and deforestation.