For yet another inexplicable reason, I completely missed Siobhan Miller’s 2022 album Bloom – until now. Her previous outing, 2020’s All Is Not Forgotten, had been a low-key, intimate acoustic work, and Bloom, with its bright sky blue cover and a return to the sound feel almost like a counterargument to its predecessor.
I absolutely love Bloom: her singing is top-notch all the way through, the band is stellar, the selection of songs almost giddily varied, from overtly familiar but cleverly arranged tunes (is it ok if I call Wild Mountain Thyme the Johnny B. Goode of Scottish folk songs? 😉) to excellent modern songs, of which Ewan MacColl’s Go, Move, Shift gets a remarkable reading here.
I sometimes attach seasons to music and this one was a no-brainer: Bloom instantly felt like a spring album, and not only because of its title. It feels like coming alive.
And when I took the time to learn what Siobhan herself said about this work, things kind of clicked. She writes that this is a post-lockdown album, created and recorded together with real living people after those two years of separation, and that “I really feel that live energy and joy comes across on Bloom more than on any other album I’ve made.”
I sure as heck felt that, and Bloom shone a bright light into my Finnish January day ☀️
https://www.siobhanmiller.com/shop
***************
If Bloom is, in my books, a spring album, then Double You is winter music.
This collaboration between the Welsh harp icon and the hugely talented Irish fiddler belongs firmly in the “Chamber Celtic” category; music that builds from folk music soil and branches out to classical and modern classical music.
The harp and the violin are instruments with sounds mostly in the higher ranges; this alone colors the album in the cooler hues of the color spectrum, so to say. Double You was a perfect choice for a long walk in our current winter wonderland scenery!
And it’s far from lifeless: the harp sparkles like fresh snow and Catrin Finch – whose playing dazzled me at CC2020 – plays with such grace and fire it’s almost unbelievable.
Aoife Ní Bhriain has worked extensively in both folk and classical scenes and has an accomplished career. She shines in both a very Irish, earthy and breathy fiddle style and in a classical violin playing; on Wandering, she goes all-out Lark Ascending or the Sibelius violin concerto with those impossibly high, yet clear and vibrant notes that reach the heavens. Amazing.
This is one of the albums I hear as a unified work with each track a movement in the whole. Some compositions awake in my mind visual associations, especially Wonder I can imagine as music in an intense drama film.
Double You is a work of the highest musicianship and it’s also expertly produced and engineered, a treat to anyone appreciating the classiest music available.
FolkNotes 