Sairie’s debut album begins at this transitional time of year, its glistening psych-folk easing us out of the summer heat towards the coming darkness. In its Pentangle-like opener Song for the Winter, birds’ voices “climb higher”, hills “glow brighter” and waves “call out louder”, and the songs that follow are similarly saturated with colour and energy, creating an intensity that gradually reveals its perils.
Based in Brighton, Sairie have released a stack of captivating singles and EPs since 2019, spanning folk, originals and modern covers; one great double A-side released earlier in the year had singer Emma Morton master the ballad May Carol and Françoise Hardy’s Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles. Her tone hooks an 80s indie-pop choirgirl-like brightness in tracks like Harder Than It Seemed, bolstered by Andy Thomas’s meaty bass, and makes you realise this style might have its roots in folk singers such as Maddy Pryor. It also channels the twisted beauty of Josephine Foster on songs such as The Breeze on the Meadow, where a wasp-like drone from Jon Griffin’s harmonium, Maria Marzaioli’s violin and Alice Eldridge’s cello amplifies hints of strangeness.
The band’s musicianship is fantastic throughout, as are their shivery arrangements, which present like finely wrought 1970s curios while swerving pastiche. Alongside dense, rich takes on traditional songs like The Gairdner and the title track (its story echoing the execution tale of the Scottish ballad, Gilderoy), they also exquisitely mix sweetness and doom. The Griffin-led Three Knots sounds like a sugar-coated duet before its descent into the depths, while The Green Light captures the giddy minutiae of falling in love when you’re young (“What makes your heart beat fast and slow?”) before a subtle but devastating shift in its story. Sairie’s new songs have ancient balladry tightly coiled in their DNA, arriving like they’ve lived rich, long lives already.
Also out this month
In Thin Air (Hudson) is the third outing by Spell Songs, the ongoing project between writer Robert Macfarlane, artist Jackie Morris, and a premier league of folk musicians, including Karine Polwart, Kris Drever and Seckou Keita. Exploring the splendours and mysteries of birdlife as populations decline, the album’s highlights include An Calman (The Dove), a patchwork of double bass, soft drums, coos and breaths, and Flight, a euphoric ode to global migrations. Soundings Folk Club founder Elanor Moss’s debut album, The Knife, the Needle (Merge), is an arresting, shivery collection, softly orchestrated with guitars, strings and horns, creating an autumnal sound world recalling the work of Bridget St John and Vashti Bunyan. Scottish rabble-rousers Shooglenifty’s 10th album, Stamina Island (Shoogle), is quite different: a rock-fuelled celebration of community ownership, spirit and survival on the Isle of Eigg, featuring Ciarán Ryan going full Slash from Guns N’ Roses, shredding jigs on the banjo.
