Wrackline

Fay Hield has a fine pedigree as a solo artist, with her previous album, 2016’s Old Adam, taking a deep dive into folk song and lore. With Wrackline she couples a fresh immersion into the ‘otherworld’ of lore, myth and song combined with her own songwriting, evoking the space between folkloric realities and our own. Lyrically, it brings a contemporary sense of empathy to songs like ‘Cruel Mother’, treating it more as case history than folkloric warning.

The set mixes emotionally sympathetic interpretations of the dark, often inexorable traditional songs and her responses to them. She’s supported by Rob Harbron, Sam Sweeney and Ben Nicholls – each of them solo artists and bandleaders in their own right – as well as Shooglenifty’s Ewan MacPherson, together forging a memorable and mythic musical journey along the ‘wrack line’ – that line of organic matter washed up in the tide, representing the between-world of spirits embedded in these songs. From the opening setting for Isobel Gowrie’s ‘Hare Spell’ to the closing ‘When She Comes’, written from the perspective of a hare, Hield is in strong voice, proclamatory and epic, especially on the likes of ‘Sweet William’s Ghost’, with Sam Sweeney’s fiddle providing haunting support.