Description
Label Review.
2019 album. Folk. Also available on CD.
Our Overview.
Rowan Rheingans has already achieved great acclaim with bands Lady Maisery, The Rheingans Sisters and Songs of Separation and is widely regarded as one of the foremost innovators in folk music today, so the release of her solo debut has been highly anticipated and does not fail to seduce the listener. ‘The Lines We Draw Together’ is quite simply a captivating heartfelt, unflinching and genre-melding debut.
Rowan Rheingans is an applauded English fiddle player, banjoist, singer and songwriter and one that never chooses to simply repeat but choosing instead to constantly innovate, ‘The Lines We Draw Together’ is best understood as an artistic piece in its own right rather than as an attempt to capture the inimitable musical essay on the power of small acts of resistance that is ‘Dispatches on the Red Dress’. Rowan explains how “they are different but very connected pieces; the album is a deeply intertwined and yet wholly different artistic journey through some of the same themes as my one-woman show. In the live show, the songs provide the emotional landscape to a very big story. On the album, these songs fully ex-press their own, complex individual stories and I am inviting different meanings and different interpretations to them here.”
Musically, ‘The Lines We Draw Together’ is often quite extraordinary too, conveying both beauty and horror with its spare, often tellingly hushed textures that sometimes expand outwards into a more chaotic and surprisingly richly detailed sonic climate. It reaches out beyond an immediately folk soundscape in drawing on the talents of her collaborators including clarinettist Jack McNeill, bassist Michele Stoddart, experimental percussionist Laurence Hunt and electronica musician Robert Bentall, while Andy Bell’s skilful, careful production ensures maximum concentration.
‘The Lines We Draw Together’ comprises 10 original songs by Rowan, whose song ‘Mackerel’ scooped the esteemed ‘Best Original Track’ award at the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Already widely celebrated as a songwriter by music critics, ‘The Lines We Draw Together’ is Rowan’s most self-assured work yet. This is adventurous and necessary new writing that asks fundamental and troubling questions with Rowan’s characteristically deep emotional charge, razor-sharp sense of purpose, audacious musicality and disarming warmth.