Recorded live in Blaxhall Village Hall, Suffolk, their second EP and the first as a trio following the departure of Maddie Cutter, unaccompanied save for the occasional shruti box drone, Anna Pool, Charlotte Vaughan and Lydia Bell again showcase their magnificent harmonies on five self-penned songs that delve into myth and mystery.
The opening track, ‘Hymn To A Genius’ is a close-harmony offering that explores the ancient concept of the Genius, not some visionary individual but a magical creature that lived within the walls of the artists’ studio and channelling, its powers channelled into art, music or philosophy:
My head is ready for the rapture
My pen is ready for the capture
The coffee’s hot
I hope you’ll come
they sing, casting the song as a hymn summoning the creative spirit and inviting it to put words in our mouths and tunes in our heads and noting how, while familiar, it can be a fickle force:
Curious, kind Delicate, shy Never on time as it reaches out to take me by the hand
An upbeat vocally percussive piece that opens and sustains a wordless backing while the voices interweave, ‘Mara’ is inspired by Sharon Blackie’s retelling of the Celtic selkie myth, the vocal textures driving the song as it captures the pull of the ocean and its freedom as the selkie is reunited with her stolen seal skin
Take the skin,
But you won’t keep the power in
Fold away,
We’ll dance upon the stones again
and her sea-sisters, expressed in its joyful refrain:
Woven with the weeds
Rising from the earth a new song, a new song
To sing the soul home!
Grounded in more earthly realities, starting with a single voice and vocal background drone before the others swell as it gathers to the finale, the traditionally cast ‘Whole Truth Five’ conjures the old punishment of deportation for a folk lament about the fate of the jailed Stop Oil activists in 2024
We all are bound
For distant shores away
Ne’er to see our loved ones
For five years and a day, five years and a day
and, by extension, environmental fossil fuel concerns about humanity and the planet to which it’s home
A battleground
Of fumes that fog the sky
and a call to activism to bring about change whatever the cost:
We only had a moment
To determine what to do
But it only takes a moment
When the path is right and true
One by one we spoke our piece
And one by one we fell
Just think about the future
We cannot comprehend
The scale of the destruction
Our children must defend
We sacrifice our freedom
so our legacy is clear,
We sacrifice our voices
so they shall not disappear
Protest of a different shade underpins the anthemic ‘Smiley Face’ which, sung from the perspective of a young girl clutching a book with her favourite character on it, a smiley face with a bow upon their head, is about how far right protesters picketed Colchester drag royalty, Shar Cooterie’s “drag story time” , the song recounting how:
As we approached the library, Mum she reached down for my hand
There were angry people shouting words I didn’t understand
They said that if you liked the storytellers you weren’t on their side
and of the LGBTQ+ counter-protest:
But as we turned to leave I saw the colours in the air
There were dancing, smiling people holding banners in the square
They said that everyone was welcome and I clutched my book with pride
So mum and I stepped through the slidy, shiny doors that opened wide
her mother offering the wisdom that:
sometimes grown ups, they get old
Without ever being lucky with the stories they get told
So they tie themselves in funny shapes which mean that they get scared
And they find hate in smiley faces wearing bows upon their head
ending with the inspiring message that:
stories lift us up when we are down, there’s no need to be scared
There’s a place for smiley faces wearing bows upon their head
It takes a lot of guts to untie knots and make a bow instead
And I’ll embrace that smiley face that wears a bow upon their head
It ends with the title track which, recorded in live layers, comprises just the repeated mantra
I will hold the wonder in the palm of my hand
as the power and volume of the vocals ebb and flow.
The song imagines the mind of Julian of Norwich, an unnamed medieval 14th century mystic and author of ‘The Revelations of Divine Love’ based on sixteen visions she had in May 1373 and who is thought to have been the first woman to write a book in English which has survived, as she holds a hazelnut shell and sees within it the entire universe. As she wrote in her book:
He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made’.
Shining a light on the experiences of women, real and imagined, it is indeed a thing of wonder.