Anna and Rowan Rheingans take neither prisoners nor comfort in this darkly beautiful confection.

Release Date: 27th September 2024

Label: Self-released – RSCD005

Format: Digital / CD

pure, pristine, pastoral and perfectly pressed

I don’t know why, but the Rheingans Sisters always make me initially think of something pure and pristine, pastoral and perfectly pressed. The reality is lot redder in tooth and claw, and however much purity there is, there is also a deeper sense of unease. Maybe I am overthinking, but I am getting the Grady twins at the Overlook Hotel, all REDRUM and blood cascading out of lift shafts. Which is all nonsense; Anna and Rowan Rheingans are not even twins.

further into avant folk

This is album number five, it seeing them move further into a definition of avant-folk, with as much reference to the experimental as to the tradition, with the outcome bringing both to bear, in a welter of melody and dysfunction.This is decisively demonstrated by opener, The Devil, a stark version of the old song, The Devil And The Farmer’s Wife, awash with drones and discord. It begins with what sounds like a coffin lid creaking, all manner of taps and clatters giving a wry sense of rhythm, quite at odds with the pitch of the vocal.

Imagine if Lankum were helmed by a pair of English milkmaids, that being much how The Devil sounds. It breaks, midway, into into industrial rustic, should there even be such a thing, with scrapes of fiddle and a clunking pizzicato, with a choral backing that is altogether rather enticing. Happy ending? I guess that depends, courtesy the intriguing “the women are much better than men, can go to hell and come back again“. Which is a yes, I guess, given that is what happens. Oo-ee-oo.

beguiling

Brädsmarsch follows, an instrumental fiddle duet, with jaws harp accompaniment, that is as strident as it is striking, the first dip into the Nordic waters the sisters are so well versed in. Brief, it breaks then into Un Voltigeur, a song which starts with banjo, before the re-written lyric, in French, unfolds. A song from Anna’s friendship circle, about who to love, who to trust, within the guise of how to tend to the garden. Perhaps that lapsed attention during French lessons was for the best, the siblings taking no prisoners, and rightly so. A little McGarrigley, it has a bridge and build midway, ahead some saxophone, from guest Daniel Thorne, weaving delicately in, between pizzicato violin and electric guitar. All very beguiling.

Livet Behöver Inga Droger, translating as “life needs no drugs“, returns the pair to the far North, a tune from Sweden’s outback, where dancing and fiddles are ample alternate provisions. An almost harshly atonal duet sees their fiddle play become starkly hypnotic, the two instruments never quite replicating the steps of the other. A much longer track follows, marrying old with the new, an 18th c. slip jig together with a composition from contemporary colleague, accordionist Steve Turner. The Great Devil, the first, is the most orthodox track so far, a courtly dance, that sieves, by way of a repetitive motif, into the more intangible Mr Turner’s Hornpipe, before feet are found and the swirl then engages. Another solely fiddle tune, you would think, until catching the purr of Thorne’s saxophone once more.

stipe-esque boozy celebrations

Drink Up starts simply as it suggests, a boozy celebration, fiddles sawing away, but is it? Written by Rowan, it swiftly turns tack, a diatribe on now, a post-folk version of R.E.M.’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It. (The jury is out as to whether the sisters feel fine; I suspect not.) It is a chilling near six minutes, with clanging off-kilter percussion, that, on a different level, could equally be a swayalong singalong shanty. What sounds like a whistle chirping in the background is actually a flabuta, an old form of Gascon flute, and the percussion is tambourin à cordes, a Provencal hand drum, both further out of the usual instruments the two sisters have at their command.

respite…

To let that one sink in, some respite comes in the form of Shade Chaser, which begins with found sound, drawn from the Nås fiddle festival that birthed track 4. The tune, in Anna’s hands, started in a crooked Quebecois style, lying dormant for several years until Rowan kickstarted it into it’s current form. And, yes, it starts all very Vent du Nord, drifting off somewhere into a drone that John Cale might be proud of, had he stuck more to his Celtic roots. Listen closely, as it closes, and there is also an organ chording slowly in the mix, as it seems to end, this coming from album producer, Adam Pietrykowski, known also as a composer of the avant garde, a musician in metal bands and a professor at Purchase University, NY. He may be also responsible for envisaging the odd repeating motif that closes the track.

regrets…

“Do not get married, you will regret it” is the simple message of Occitan song, Sabiatz Drolletas, which digs deeper still into the style of the album’s opener, matching a melodic vocal delivery to a gaunt background, long drawn out single notes, until a fiddle starts to dance to the same tune, the tune the voices had earlier been treading. It ends by breaking into a night terror of noise and percussion, with bells and scurrying footfall. The silence ensuing allows solo violin to spark up anew, for Marche À La Cabrette, a mystic processional, that feels restful by comparison.

what trick next?

So far it is any guess as to which trick the sisters will next pull, it being a surprise that it is with warm banjo notes that Anna’s Old Neptune begins. Based on a tune by another friend, Will Allen, it muses on the passing of time through the metaphor of a beach, and Old Neptune “washed away on a winter’s day“. A lovely song, again it invokes a sense of McGarrigle, with the paired banjos making for an inviting and glowing bed for Anna’s sensitive singing.

In complete contrast is Over And Over Again, a song that came out of improvisation and sounds it. Unsettling strings resonate before mismatched layers of further sound struggle to make sense, until electric guitar picks out a gothic American primitive pattern. A chant of “over and over again” is taken up, a reflection of the repetitive cycle of badness we deal on our world, a mournful fiddle line then adding to the overall helplessness the track conjures up. Yikes.

The final piece, Purcell’s may be either an attempt to move away from the despair felt within the preceding track, or maybe to cement it, by way of making solemn the timelessness of it all. After all, the source tune dates from the end of the 1600s, as if to say how far and how little we have come. That said, it is a darkly beautiful rendering, with Thorne adding some final honks to crack the vessel and let in the light.

rewards revealed

You may surmise this is far from a straightforward listen, not that should put you off, as it rewards the listener, revealing aspects all too often hidden by adherence to tradition for tradition’s sake. This is living and breathing, sometimes gasping, tradition, and is to be encouraged. If we called 2020’s Receiver : “a rich and original collaboration” then with visual artist Pierre-Olivier Boulant, this time, working with Pietrykowski, it feels richer still, if needing the digestif that richer fare so often requires.

Here’s that shanty noir, Drink Up:

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