Somewhere, deep in the forest, something stirs as the analogue Clarke delights.
Release Date : 17th October 2025
Label : Corduroy Punk Records
Format : CD / Vinyl / Cassette / Digital
GAUNT SPLENDOUR BETTERED
Never let it be said that Josienne Clarke doesn’t work her muse, it seeming she can write near automatically, such the run of releases of late. You’d think the glut would bring out a diminishment of quality, but you’d think wrong, this new release possibly bettering even the gaunt splendour of Parenthesis,I. If that release had her turn her spotlight ever deeper into her psyche, here she turns that light still brighter, by ridding herself of all and everything extraneous, This is her voice, her playing and very little else.
Fear, grief, love, shame and the futility of the human condition are the themes explored here. So, pretty much normal service from this brutally sensitive artist. Brutally sensitive? As in she almost savagely forces herself to identify the demons, that have have her place so little value on her own worth. Recorded straight to tape, here there are none of the safety nets a studio might provide, magnifying the risks in the perfection she demands of herself. (For the brave, there is an evisceratingly honest documentary around the making of this album, (trailer on youtube), should you wish to see her squirm.)
BUTTERFLY WING FRAGILITY
Hushed guitar is the first sound you hear, picking out a revolving pattern. Her voice is as fragile as the butterfly wing she references, setting out her stall, “to sing, to breathe, to feel for form and formula.” Entitled We Are Never Coming Back, it is a delicate cri de coeur, with guitar both faltering and intentionally hesitant. A second Clarke adds an occasional shared vocal, dipping in and out, and it feels almost intrusive to be listening. Never has she sounded more alone or bereft.
What Do I Do sounds a little more confident, a little more more emphatic, bolstered by a drum machine and the guitar now electric. A hint of I Think We’re Alone Now, Lene Lovich rather than Tiffany, occupies the melody, the lyric disarmingly talking about “not trying being to be a good girl anymore“. When she enunciates the word “stop“, with a drop to speaking voice, where elsewhere she is at her higher register, it is stunning, As is a sotto voce 1,2, telling the Roland SP404 when to stop. As, again, is the near instantaneous start of Tiny Bird’s Lament, based back on a rolling picked acoustic motif. Her voice here is tiny too, voices, actually, and they swoop like the bird she is identifying as. Slightly atonal, the song sounds as old as Appalachia, a Coo Coo Bird for the distressed, aimed, savagely, at a prior assailant.
A GENTLE SIMMER
A smoky jazz basement then near materialises for In The Dark Of Night, with gently amplified chords simmering gently, a slow flicker beneath her voice. The song sounds a memo to self: “I’ve come to recue you“, and that fleeting positivity is enough to transform the moment. Fingers scraping across the strings, it is the song that suddenly has you realise what may be going on here. This album arose from her taking the barest of song sketches with her, to a remote cabin in the Scottish highlands, all with little flesh on their bones.
Unable to apply the veneer of polish a studio can provide, laying songs straight to analogue tape is a process without a safety net, songs finished on the hoof, and based more on promise. Just Clarke and Murray Collier to record, engineer and co-produce the sounds they between them could make, the album materialised over just one week.
With a background laugh leaking onto the tape, Dreams Of Sleep is a brief reverie, with a melody that could easily be trad.arr,. even if the words decidedly aren’t, the feel that the tradition runs constantly in her veins. Often vocally compared with Sandy Denny, here is where that rings truest, but a frailer Denny, wasting away. The Sucker Of Struggle, a fabulous title, is then the most conventionally structured song yet. Clarke is famously dismissive and deprecating of her guitar capabilities, and will deny the Jansch-y nature to this one. But it’s there.
DRUM MACHINE, BARRETT AND DENNY
The drum machine returns for AI Love You, the plodding repetition setting perfectly a love/hate construction to, I think or assume, AI. A synthesiser ekes out slow chords, a piano plinks and low guitar notes walk alongside the rhythm. Intangibly vague around the opinions offered, it is actually rather lovely. Ending on a slow trickle of piano, it, oddly, occupies the same spare space offered by Syd Barrett’s Love Song. Bushes, Briars And Thorns is then a Fotheringay-esque acoustic spectre, with a ghostly corale of Clarkes adding a chill lustre. it’s shortness is part the mystique, begging rewind and replay.
My notes comment “angelic milkmaid” for Ssana, a twisting euphony melded out of acoustic picking and multi-tracked vocals. A hint of Don McClean’s Vincent flutters briefly. a song far more syrupy than this, and suddenly, over the space of the last three or four songs, the worth of the album is suddenly transformed, leaping from interesting to vital. And probably without you otherwise noticing. And the spark is still afire, for the Madler Horror Story, what surely must be a murder ballad, with unearthly creaks and groans underpinning her strongest vocal yet, ethereal synths hovering at the side of the moaning Clarke chorus. A chiming note possibly strikes a, if not the witching hour, as what sounds like a door slams shut, to close.
SLYLY SUBVERSIVE
The simple silken rotation of Underdog can be seen either as a palate cleanser or just another course in what is becoming quite the feast, a rusty bottleneck playing an elegant discord in the background. For all the gloss of digital, in a studio, I am enjoying this analogue makey-doey. Listen carefully and the “howling at the door” is a genuine ow-oooo, a slyly subversive touch. Afternoon Shadow then melts into being, an icicle shrinking in front of your ears, a delicate poem that wouldn’t shame Nick Drake’s legacy.
The final track is actually the first to fully mine the essence of Clarke shown previously. A Slow Burn is exactly that, gradually building over a sonorous synthscape. With her voice and guitar mining an unconscious absorption of her Scottish island home, let alone this highland retreat, it has a stark gravitas that underlines the bridge between her back catalogue and this otherwise more experimental work, awash with ungainly elegance.
CALLING FOR MORE
If you are a stranger to Josienne Clarke, this album might be a good place to start. Yes, it takes a wee while to gel in your consciousness, as you ponder the first few songs, but, by the end, will have you calling for more. Listen, watch the film, and listen again,“building a fire, piece by piece, that never goes out”.
P.S. Recorded, as it was, on tape, clearly the need for a tape version was compulsory, hence the availability of cassette. But rush, there are only 50 available!
In The Dark Of The Night:
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