Discovering Lucy Mellenfield’s ‘Tell the Water, She Will Listen’ over these wet and miserable January weekends, when it feels like the world’s gone mad, and it’s hard not to feel a little on the miserable side, it has been something of a soothing, healing balm.
Opening with ‘Like A Feather’ – kindly, gently reminding us to just breathe. Just breathe – and remember that we can find solace in the mystical healing power of music. This is a beautiful, elevating, intelligent opus. I am reminded of Jeff Buckley in female form. I am reminded of the Elizabeth Fraser on Cocteau Twin’s ‘This Mortal Coil’. This is what comes to mind.
It is a work of grace and elegance. And then some – for there’s the jazz infusions that takes it up on to another level altogether – particularly on the final two tracks – ‘At the Mercy’ (Part 1 and Part2).
Lucy is described as a jazz-folk singer-songwriter. Interweaving improvisation and folk melodies with immersive soundscapes and vivid lyric writing, the roots of her music sparked out of the darkness of early 2020 alongside Lucy’s move to Birmingham, discovering a whole new community of musicians and lifelong friends. As well as writing and singing all of the songs on her new album, she also plays grand piano, upright piano, rhodes, keyboards, synths and acoustic guitar. She is clearly a multi-talented writer and musician.
It is a poignant original studio recording drawing on fragility, love, loss and the turmoil of society over the last five years.
She says it is “an album that pinpoints moments in my early twenties where I have been at my most vulnerable. I have faced fears, battled with relationships, fallen in love, seen loved ones suffer, revisited childhood trauma, experienced health scares, and have raised questions about the frightening society we live in. For me, songs are a saving grace. They unravel this scroll of feelings and thoughts that would otherwise linger in knots within me”.
“Music finds the right words through texture, instrumentation, tonalites, harmonic shifts and poetry interweaving in time together. I’m lucky enough to have music to speak through. She is the water that listens attentively and lets my deepest thoughts communicate themselves to the world.”
Weaved meticulously throughout an adventurous sonic landscape, featuring keyboards, guitars, saxophones, drums, bass and an extra sprinkling of magic from producer Chris Hyson, Lucy’s writing on the record captures some of the deepest emotions and marked experiences from her life in recent years.
“Like a Feather” channels coping with family conflict, drawing upon the trials and tribulations of divorce. The lyrics describe choosing teams, swaying from one side to the other. “As a child, there is burning hope that one day things will resolve, however upon reaching adulthood, you learn to live with a pain that may always exist,” Lucy recalls. The feather is a symbol of fragility: a theme which echoes throughout the album.
“Orange and Lemons”, is the album’s bittersweet love story. Pure and unashamed, yet short-lived and unrequited, the melancholic undertone of heartbreak seeps into the track through the squeaks of the piano and the honesty of the lyrics. “Paper Thin”, meanwhile, captures the essence of an unpredictable, agonising love affair, with themes of dependency, instability, anguish and torment rising from the unsettling harmonic landscape and vocal cries.
Lucy previously self-released music while studying at the University of Southampton, landing in the Best of 2020 on BBC Introducing Solent. After moving to Birmingham to study a masters in jazz voice in September 2020, she began to shape the threads of what has now become her debut recording.
“The whole lockdown period inspired creativity and lent a lot of time to focus on song writing, a chance for an empty mind to wander and reflect,” says Lucy. “Meanwhile, events sprouting up around the world generated a whole new perspective and triggered a lot of questions. Never in my life had my instincts felt so alive. The following years rolled on, unravelling more unrest, protest, conflicts of opinion. People were hooked to their screens like never before, and society was broken apart with so many people rife with judgement. A lot of society lost perspective and the ability to empathise thanks to the hounding nature of the media. Both the real and online world became a battlefield.”
The compelling track “Yellow Duck” echoes these experiences. Beginning with the image of a lonesome yellow duck wading through a pond at night, the song became a much deeper reflection on life as a young woman in her mid-twenties.
I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know ‘Tell The Water, She Will Listen’ – and I think in Lucy Mellenfield there a unique, real, and genuine talent. This is a truly beautiful album – a keeper.