Changes afoot for Salt House, but still a chance to savour reflection, renewal and connection.

Release Date: 3rd October 2025

Label: Hudson Records

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

ORGANIC TAPESTRY INTACT

There have been changes afoot since we last came upon Salt House, with Lauren MacColl moving onward since 2023’s Riverwoods, after 13 years, to engage more with her myriad other projects. Stepping swiftly into place has come Anna Hughes, also of Northumbrian duo, Watersmeet, bringing with her a warm, lustrous voice and richly edible fiddle tones. Both these make sure the organic tapestry of Salt House remains intact, as both her voice and her play slip effortlessly into the existing textures laid down by Ewan MacPherson and Jenny Sturgeon.

Harmonies and interlocking instrumentation remain key to the band, with their three individual voices meshing with fiddle, guitars and keyboards. Andy Bell returns for production duties, guaranteeing the soundscape, abetted by Ben Nicholls, on basses, and Magnus Lundmark on additional percussion. Lundmark was a previous associate of McPherson in UK/Scandi band, Happ, and Nicholls, well, he has collaborated with just about everyone.

Scarrow is a wonderful word, in both sound and meaning, and, Scots in origin, refers to “faint light”, thus encompassing both dawn and dusk, as well as some of the dull, dreich and near lightless days that country can provide, where the dim gleam of stars, the sun or the moon are barely evident, the only scarrow in the sky. Even with MacColl’s Black Isle pointer removed from the Salt House axis, Hughes’ North Eastern locale, along with Sturgeon’s Shetland and McPherson’s Highlands, maintain a geography that can well identify with that notion.

HAUNTING WHEEZE OF HARMONIUM

Autumn On The Run opens the set with the hum of harmonium and the voice of Sturgeon. A reset and re-imaging of ‘A Winter Phantasy’, a poem by Violet Jacob, whilst the topic may sound cold, the presentation feels from within, snug in front of a fire, the keyboard wheeze providing a lush backdrop to the song. A haunting melody carries the exhortation to “Dance outside, under a thousand stars.” Fingerpicked guitar, possibly dulcimer, lightly amplified, adds textures, as Hughes adds her voice, in harmony. It makes for a strongly atmospheric start.

Take This Day emerges from a flurry of fingerpicked guitar, carpe diem by any other name, a song sung and written by Hughes. Her voice occupies a sweeter register to Sturgeon’s more glacial tones, which, as the two come together, suddenly all the geese are bumping. A keyboard tinkles and, as dulcimer strums delicately in. It’s all rather lovely, a serenade to kickstarting whatever Monday it is. Or any other day. Cut Him Out In Little Stars then begins with a more rhythmic guitar.

MacPherson is an unashamed acolyte of the Bert Jansch school of play, this song, his song, fitting well into that mould. His voice is a slightly battered vessel, perfect for the narrative and as an anchor for the two women as they, too, add their voices. Harmonium gives a maudlin poignancy to the lyric, and Hughes applies a brush of darkly unsentimental fiddle colour. The sleeve notes suggest the line that inspired this Romeo and Juliet drawn title, was discovered written on the Covid Wall of Remembrance, in London, perpetuating the sombre mood.

EMOTIONAL BALLAST

Fathoms sees Sturgeon again picking up on an existing text, Drowned, from Songs Of The North, itself a translation from the Gaelic. Unmistakably of such origin, it is a lament to a true love lost to the sea. Hughes provides additional emotional ballast in both fiddle and voice, with Sturgeon, in her faltering vocal, sounding drained of her own. If the cruelty of the sea is part the natural world, so too is birdsong, which provided the basis of Hughes’ melody for Headed Our Way, a song written around the rhythm and calls of nature. As ever, it is the subtle use of keyboard within the surround of strings that epitomises the Salt House experience, along with the consoling creaks and thuds of percussion. Nichols is embedded within the overall, but you have to listen to catch his lower notes.

Pizzicato plucks are the accompaniment for Sturgeon’s Snow Walking, which gradually builds in a throb of bass and percussion, the strings becoming bowed. As clear as a snowdrop, the vocal skips through the crunch of the settled flakes. The vocal becomes a repeated chant, a nocturnal ceremony for the depths of winter. The wintry feel, that haunts this record, continues into MacPherson’s Horizon, his voice and guitar the most attractive of toddies for any inclemency. Fiddle and harmonium really do make for a compelling combination, and I could listen to a song like this forever.

HUSHED AND SLIGHTLY PAGAN

I Met At Eve has an I Roved Out atmospheric that infuses it, becoming slightly pagan as the the hushed harmonies vie with electric guitar and the bowed bass of Nicholls. That Hughes based it on the Walter De La Mare poem of the same name comes as some shock, it darker than that name might suggest, ahead remembering he wrote much more than for children, with a substantive legacy of gothic horror also to his name. This smacks of the latter and is chillingly gorgeous, finding the tiptoe melody impossible to shake off.

Needing more solid ground on which to tread, I am not sure if the peat bogs of Sutherland’s Flow Country provide quite that, but Underwing takes us to that destination, a rotating and repeating figure from McPherson. Carbon capture may seem a dour subject for a song, but it is more a paean to the moths that fly those lands by night. The song has an appropriately dusty feel, as the voices fade into the arrangement. If I am reminded of one of David Crosby’s more free-form tone poems, would I be alone, especially as Hughes and Sturgeon fill out the palette into a semblance of, after the Byrds, that singer’s most famous band.

HOPE FOR THE REPEATING CYCLE

Blackbird, which follows, isn’t that one, but rather all the more evidence for the Salt House love of the natural world, untainted, too much, by the heavy footprint of man. This is Sturgeon’s lovesong to the tune of a blackbird. Echoes of the spring trill of returning species lie within the roll of picked strings, picked then up by Hughes’ fiddle, and, after all the darker songs of darker nights, it offers hope for the repeating cycle. If that was spring, we float next to Summer, Summer may well be the name of the child that Hughes wrote the song for and about, but the name was chosen for the season of birth, the metaphor complete. A gentle wail, possibly vocal, possibly Bell’s synthesised calling forth of the same, enters at much the same time as the three singers harmonise together, bringing the song to a close, whilst guitars ripple.

ANYTHING BUT FAINT

If the last song feels like an afterword, perhaps it is. It is as if, the seasons having again turned successfully, that the trio are now looking back, with no small reverence. Written by MacPherson as a gift to Kim Carnie, whose own album featured favourably so recently, the aim was to capture the manner and style of the Mànran singer. It is McPherson who leads the song, Share The Light, and the scarrow captured feels anything but faint. The exquisite harmonies sound unrehearsed and entirely natural, with a sense of sacrament lingering between the notes. It is placed perfectly, to fully savour this album of reflection, renewal, and, ultimately, connection.

Take This Day:

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