Kate Young’s Umbelliferæ turns our gaze downwards, to the incredible variety of plant life beneath our feet, but also looks up and out at social and physical landscapes, at music and folk culture.
The sounds of the album are immensely varied as it moves through percussion played with brushes, instrumental-led sections, lyrics, humming, and vocalisation, from the hymn-like ‘Milk & Dew’ to the plucked strings of ‘The Seed’ which, in isolation, could sound like an indie-pop track. Young herself plays fiddle and the album features an international ensemble of talented musicians, including Su-a Lee (cello), Patsy Reid (viola), May Halyburton (double bass), Tim Lane (drums), Claudia Schwab (violin, Austria), Corrina Hewat (clàrsach) and Sofia Högstadius (violin, Sweden).
Despite the sonic and instrumental variation, the voices here never appear to be competing, and the attentive way in which the artists have collaborated is audible. Even ‘Lale Li Si, Zyumbyul Li Si’, a traditional Eastern Bulgarian song Young learned in Plovdiv, which translates as ‘Are you a tulip, are you a hyacinth?’, doesn’t feel like a departure from the flow of the album, despite being from a different musical tradition. As well as collaborating widely, this album draws on influences from world and classical music, and on research from herbalists’ texts and folklore tales conducted on a retreat in a Northumberland community farm. The depth of study and process that has gone into making this album is evident.
Young has an incredible ability to work string instruments and vocals together, so that, at times, the string parts sing and the vocals have a string-like quality.
She is an award-winning composer, and her confidence in composition is also reflected in the lengths of the tracks on this album, ranging from two to eleven minutes long. What they have in common is a seeking curiosity, and at times an urgency – in looking at plantlore, Young is also thinking about the natural world in crisis. This is exemplified in ‘Remember the Land’, an expansive song which is at times memorialising, then beseeching, then celebratory.
My favourite track is the immensely sensitive ‘Nettle Waltz’, in which Young puts a spoken word recording to a subtle string arrangement, as she also does in ‘Prelude to Dandelion’. On ‘Nettle Waltz’, the Shetland-accented voice of Brucie Henderson describes picking, boiling, bottling, and use of a nettle-based medicine with blood-purifying properties. In this song, as elsewhere on the album, Young finds an innate musicality in oral folk culture, in plant shapes and patterns, and in the process of composition itself.
Umbelliferæ is out now. Available to buy/stream here.
Main Photo Credit: Somhairle Macdonald
