Masterfully bleak songs of winter from Bridget Hayden, delivered with a feel of disinterment rather than revival.

Release Date: 10th January 2024

Label: Basin Rock Records

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

Can a record reek of it’s birthplace? If so, this disc positively exudes elixir of Todmorden, home of Basin Rock Records (Jim Ghedi, Andrew Tuttle, Nadia Reid, Aiofe Nessa Francis), the former milltown that sits on the Yorks/Lancs border in the Calder Valley. Actually a pretty little town, it sounds perpetually autumnal and dusk, the name said to be a mix of the German and French for death. Hayden has a back story both as a rural conjuror and as a member of various free-form noise rock acts, her banshee wail a fitting cog in the industrial sonic. But she, dialled down, has also been exploring the darker side of the folk tradition, finding this too a match for her vocal calisthenic.

OLD FAITHFULS…REVISITED

It is true the songs chosen here are well worn permanents of the folk canon, overly so, if you check out the list, but don’t let that put you off. Indeed, forgive also the spelling of one title, smacking more of corporate hospitality than the mystic melancholic delivered. Old faithfuls, possibly, of floor singers of any folk club, from here to Helsinki, but step back a bit and recall why these songs have become such, via the stellar renditions of the great and the good. Not possibly so old or faithful to her existing audience, either, or to new ones, even, and that can only be a good thing, both for the songs and their provenance. (Having said, Hayden has visited at least one of these songs before, twice in fact, with Factory Girl getting some visceral tweaks on her 2019 outing, Soil And Song.)

With her Apparitions, Sam McLoughlin’s harmonium and Dan Bridgewood-Hill’s violin, setting much the sonic tone, Hayden’s voice is the star, a stark and piercing howl, underpinned also by her underlying banjo, cello and synth. Pretty or pastoral it ain’t. Lovely On The Water opens with broad and melancholic sweeps of fidddle, the harmonium a doleful echo. Hayden sweeps in , her low alto matched with some sparsely plucked banjo, cello a gloomy extra layer, lest the mood not yet be clear. Slow is good and this is excellent. She incants the word like a prayer, or, more likely, a spell, an echo of double tracking flitting in and out of her vocal. Oof, what a start!

ECLIPSING THE CHILLSTRESSES

A drone of harmonium and the gentle skip of banjo introduces the most haunting Blackwaterside you have yet heard, the melody near stuck in a quicksand slowly sinking delivery. Sirenesque harmonies add a spectral shimmer. Are You Going To Leave Me, up next, and, to which, on the going so far, gets the answer no, is a meandering processional of languid beauty, whilst She Moved Through The Fayre, now fully forgiven, restores all the funereal iciness of this ghostly tale. Mausoleums provide greater warmth than this rendition, eclipsing even the versions of such chillstresses as Sandy Denny, Máire Brennan or Cara Dillon. It is sumptuously cold, with that deceptive warmth that only extreme temperatures deliver.

When I Was In My Prime flickers along on a (very) low flame, the banjo offering a loping impetus sufficient to prevent each song seeping into the next. The wraith-like double tracked chorus return for this one, as cello and fiddle draw out misty trails about them. The aforementioned Factory Girl is much in the same vein, harmonium and banjo jostling at cross-purpose. Set very much to the same arrangement as Sinead O’Connor’s version with the Chieftains, the contrast between O’Connor’s crystalline and Hayden’s smoky stone is compelling.

SOILY CADENCE

Red Rocking Chair is an old bluegrass lament with many names, seldom covered this side of the pond, but squeezes, pound for pound, just as much angst, between it’s sparse population of notes, as any of the more Anglo-Celtic selections here. Not for the first time, my imagination is playing tricks, adding a Todmorden appropriate silver band to the arrangement, and thinking quite what a sound that might be. But back then it is, to close, for the more familiar territory of The Unquiet Grave. Drawn out to a majestic eight minutes, there would be time aplenty to compare with the myriad other interpretations, but that would be a waste of the time she gives this majestic ballad. For all the equally sombre arrangements, few offer the same sense of bruising and decay. Her soiled/soily cadence is perfect. Purity might befit the tomb, but never the grave.

This isn’t music to have you dancing or laughing, but is perfect for those moments of contemplation, perhaps as you sit alone, waiting for the first snow of the year to come. Songs to settle your affairs to, songs to prepare for the future possibly overeggs it, but maybe not. A grand start to the year.

Here is a gaunt, Apparition-free version of She Moved Through The Fair, noting the “alternate” spelling:

Bridget Hayden online : Website / X (formerly Twitter) / Instagram / Bandcamp

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