“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower”
That is the legendary opening of William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence. I don’t mean to raise Sleeping Spirals to the same Olympian status as Blake and his poem, but those lines spontaneously came to me when the second listening of this album ended in silence.
You have two musicians, one English, one French-born cosmopolitan. Hannah James (also one third of Lady Maisery) sings and plays the accordion, kalimba (West African “finger piano”) and percussion. Toby Kuhn plays the cello.
That’s all the musicians there are; all the sounds on this album come from these two people and those few acoustic instruments.
And it’s huge.
Sometimes it’s huge because they can create massive, soul-shaking sounds just by playing their instruments. Who would have thought that the cello’s and the accordion’s lower ranges playing together can be this majestic? When that dark wall of sounds submerges you on a humble-seeming small-scale folk album, you can get swept off your feet. I know I was, already during the opening In the Gloaming where the tenderly sung narrative suddenly switches into another gear.
Sometimes it’s huge because their music breathes: there are silences and spaces, both fleeting and quick and longer and deep, in the songs; listen to Under Sea, for example. It’s awesome how different silences can be, and how meaningful (being Finnish, I know much about silences, but this is different). The music lives and breathes through these two people, who play so perfectly together, it’s a marvel.
And the entire album is huge in its emotional and human voice and experience. Sometimes it takes the form of something mystical, as in Ragged Woman and Jezerka. It’s always there in the powerful delivery and presence that Hannah James emanates. And the vox humana is there even in the instrumentals, especially January, a tune so beautiful I held my breath.
The tunes are original, with one trad, The Three Ravens. Most are grounded in British and European folk music and song but come with character and feel all their own.
Sleeping Spirals is one of those albums that came to me recently by a coincidence. It’s from 2021 and I had no previous awareness of it before I pressed play a few days ago. It’s just a giddy, heady feeling when something this precious surprises you out of the blue.
So now that I’ve told you about it, you don’t have to wait for a happy accident. Go listen – preferably with good headphones, because this is beautifully produced and engineered and you should get the most out of it.
FolkNotes 