Island life, ornithology, botany and ecology combine to make any education a treat and a privilege.

Release Date : 2nd May 2025

Label : Self-Released

Format : CD / vinyl / digital

Context

So what, then, is a swilkie? Silkies and selkies we know, those ethereal sea sprites, calling sailors to the deep. As I understand it, this swilkie isn’t one such, although I can imaging many once may have thought it so. The Swilkie is a whirlpool, a dangerous and hungry whirlpool, the most dangerous off the Pentland Firth, between Caithness and the Orkneys. In the ubiquitous nod to mythology, it is so named in reference to the viking legacy, and where all the salt was ground, in the ocean bed, so as to make the sea salty, the reverberations of the process causing the currents. When the aparatus was stolen, and shipped away, the boat then sank, off Stroma Head, yet has continued to grind away, forevermore. Which all seems entirely reasonable.

Lane likes this sort of tale and, indeed, the meeting place between the wildness of sea around Scotland’s North and West, and the imagination of man, trying to explain it and failing to tame it. This album was forged from three distinct island refuges’s undertaken by the singer, so as to hone her muse. Thus, these 12 songs are drawn from a mix of settings, from the isles of Eigg, Mull and Sanday, the last being part of Orkney.

RECURRING THEMES

The recurring themes are nature as in a sense of place and landscape, weaving a narrative between ecology, conservation, islands and folklore. The songs are broadly a mix of simple and ornate, those contasts often aligning, cast into statuesque beauty by the assembled musicians, drawn together by Lane and producer, Andy Bell. These include Bell regulars like Ben Nicholls and Louis Campbell, on basses and guitars, respectively, with the mellifluous percussion of Signy Jakobsdottir gracing many the tracks. Piping wonder, Malin Lewis is here too, if providing more fiddle than pipes, with Alex Lyon, keyboard king from Blazin’ Fiddles, here providing clarinets, allowing Jen Austin to supply piano. There is also a choir of friends to give, where necessary, a vocal swell of sound, which includes Josie Duncan and Jenny Sturgeon.

Proportionate acceptance

Big Skies are the normal in the Hebrides and the Northern Isles, but rather than the Big Music/Big Sky exuberant bombast of early Waterboys, Simple Minds and U2, this is a more grounded acceptance of proportion. A languid strum of guitar beckons in her clarion clear vocal, a piano gently adding chords, with muted electric guitar doing the same. A heartbeat of percussion drifts in and out, with a raggedy harmony from Michael McGovern joining for the chorus. this builds, with the full chorale present by the ending. Sweeping curves of fiddle swoop around the sensitive structure that materialises, initially hard to associate with any one instrument, until the realisation it can only be that. As well as playing the fiddle, Lewis co-wrote not only this song, but many of the others.

That engaging and atmospheric start is followed by the more jittery Wild Things Grow. a tribute to the resilience of plants, over picked guitar and banjo, the banjo also from Spafford, With a simple melody, the woodwind of Lyons adds warmth, Sturgeon, Duncan et al adding layered textures, as a metronome of spare and economical double bass points the way. Albatross then captures the cadence of the huge sea bird in flight, or, at least, as i might imagine it, wafting on pockets of air. Are albatross native to any of Lane’s island escapes? Usually not, it seems, but the song tells of when one such ancient mariner was spotted, off the northern Shetlands, sometime in the 70’s.

Yearning melancholia

Torus mimics that same mood, but with the sea as the medium of travel, rather than the (big) sky. Basking sharks are the subject, this time, possibly timid creatures to admire and respect: this is no Amity island apocalypse. It is a gently beautiful song, banjo and fiddle conjuring up a sense of yearning melancholia. As Lane sings of the manufacture of oil and tallow from their harvested corpses, it is clear who the baddy here is. The title track might first sound to be a further tread down the same template, but becomes more aggressive, or as aggressive this chamber folk orchestra can get, as the drones of bowed bass and glacial synths (from producer, Bell) give way to a slow doomy and portentous rhythm, evocative of the maelstrom. If you don’t catch the turning tide, give it a second listen, to capture the ful fever dreamscape.

Boat Song strips iteslf of all the extra layers, a live version, characterised by the massed backline of vocals, over Lane’s guitar and matter of fact delivery. The song itself is a terrific litany about that constant of island life, perhaps especially as the stock of Caledonian MacBrayne is allowed to slowly decay: “The post won’t come today, the post is not on their way, it’ll sit in Mallaig, til the storm has passed, the boat won’t come today“, with the litany of similar occupational hindrances unfolding in turn. A wheezy concertina expresses weary islander acceptance.

Jonah redux?

Whilst it may have been enough to continue with all these slow form observations and reportage, Lane can wake you up with lively too, Washed Up being the perfect example thereof, pitched perfectly at the midpoint. Over a clatter of drums, this rhythm is evocative of the treadle loom in a crofter’s house, This shift up the gears is so beguiling that, at first, the tale being told may be lost, an inverse telling of the story of Jonah and the whale, were he an island wifey. And, rather than a metaphor for faith, this is more a cautionary tale, as her enjoyment(!) of the adventure becomes tainted by the colume of plastic in her swallower’s stomach. it is and works so much better than my potted synopsis.

I’m guessing there are few songs that are dedicated to moss and/or lichen. Lane likes lists and delineation, as she recites the names and nature of the various symbiotic flora. some minimalist electric guitar, within the overall haze of the arrangement. saves it from becoming overt whimsy; in fact, repeated listens have it sticking fast. From close-up, it is to widescreen that Staffa now takes this journey, a hymn in awe of the island that might equally apply to anywhere you call your home, puffin friendly or not. Lyon adds some haunting clarinet, an instrument I always wish were not such a stranger on the shores of folk song.

Ladies of the lamp

Silent perhaps returns to (the) Swilkie, and to the light house at Stroma Head. Or not, but refers, nonetheless to the separate trajectories of three different female lighthouse keepers. There is a hint of a youthful Joni Mitchell filtering through, a distant echo of Both Sides Now in the construction, and this can be no bad thing, Lewis adds a shimmering glissando of strings. The Curlew then has us back to ornithology, and the mood is still dialled down. Once more, it is almost more through melody and arrangement, together with the timbre of her voice, that the subject matter is embraced, possibly even more than by the lyric. Lewis and Spafford add exempary red sky at night textural tones to the whole, it one of the strongest songs in the set.

To bookend the project, Lane reprises the ambience offered in the opener, as Feed The Seas returns to the simplest expressions of guitar and voice, her fingers skidding audibly on the frets. It makes for an exquisite epilogue.

Bonus disc

But that isn’t all, if purchased through Bandcamp or in any physical format, as there is an additional disc. featuring largely the same songs, stripped back and presented at earlier stages in their incarnation, field and live recordings. Churches, crofts, visitor centres and hides provide the various settings, including, touchingly, the Isle of Eigg primary school, the pupils reined in to giving their own unpolished choral accompaniment to Wild Things Grow. Three songs that are not on the studio disc are also included, Solstice, Loch Scridain and the traditional Lassie Lie near me, which can be seen as either equivalent works in progress or just enticing snippets of an artist in her element.

If her debut, Hallival, gave forth promise for what this quietly confident songsmith can produce, her transplantation, from a Lancastrian upbringing to the West Coast of Scotland reaping dividends, as the geography and history of the country positively spills over into her writing. I had always assumed, given her first name, that she was a Scot. She is now.

Here is a delightful version of Torus, featuring several of the core-contributors, with Spafford, Nicholls and Lewis accompanying Lane:

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