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Scottish singer Kate Young has made a name for herself on the live music circuit with a compelling mixture of a densely compositional musical style and an approach to songwriting that draws on both traditional and experimental methods. With those disparate elements finally coming together in the recording studio, with Umbelliferæ, Young has created an album that bridges the gaps between chamber folk, pop, world music and contemporary composition.
Conceived and recorded in rural Northumberland with a string quintet made up of internationally renowned chamber musicians, Umbelliferæ is ostensibly a debut album – Young’s only other full-length release, Swimmings of the Head, came out a decade ago under the Kate in the Kettle moniker – but it sounds like the work of a mature and accomplished artist with a whole bunch of great albums already under her belt. It shouldn’t really be a surprise: the honing of this material in a live setting has been going on for a while now, and Young has had ample time to create and perfect a genuinely original concept. The concept in question is medicinal plantlore, and every song on Umbelliferæ is in its own way concerned with herbs or flowers: their ancient uses, their folklore, the intangible qualities that make them unique.
The atmospheric opener, Mountain, gives the quintet the perfect chance to introduce themselves, slipping between romantic Sturm und Drang and minimal, contemporary soundscapes, while Young’s singing flits around a traditional-sounding melody and flirts with an almost proggy use of repetition and layering. At times, the arrangement sounds like a folkier and more experimental Kate Bush, but Young’s voice, with her Scottish accent foregrounded, is all her own.
Elecampane begins with a challenging instrumental section that slowly resolves into something approaching melody without ever losing a sense of narcotic, uncanny wooziness. The Marigold Grove welds together elements of progressive folk-rock (an insistent, percussive pace and a switch of time signatures) with a more pastoral brand of chamber music, and includes a passage of highly unconventional singing, while Dandelion and its brief, spoken-word Prelude exist in the gap between social history and wild, untrammelled musical experimentation, complete with growling drones, unexpected and sometimes dissonant flights of violin and pounding folk-rock drumming. In places, Young’s vocals recall Joanna Newsom in the way they delight in both the sound and the meaning of words (fans of Newsom’s faux-folkloric narrative Colleen will find much to love here and throughout the album).
The pace slackens a little on Borthwick, giving Young’s storytelling skills and pliable voice a chance to rise to the surface of the mix and making an elegant but playful concoction. Here and on Gentian, a short song that contains the best of all of her worlds and is as ornate as a set of art nouveau gates, she shows that she can let a song unfold languorously just as easily as whipping it up into a frenzy of soaring, swooping, unpredictable strings.
Whereas in songs like Nettle Waltz, the string quintet’s more baroque elements proliferate (with a filigree-like backdrop proving an unexpected but effective companion to a recording of Shetland shepherd and ploughman Brucie Henderson talking about the herbal uses of the nettle). At other points, there are more sombre passages, reflecting the loss of knowledge and lore and habitat. Closing track Milk & Dew is a good example of this, narrated from the point of view of a bird flying over a changing landscape, as is the mournful Lale Li Si, Zyumbyul Li Si, a traditional Bulgarian song that keeps a sedate pace, even as Young’s voice flutters and flits above the strings.
At the album’s physical and emotional heart is the eleven-minute Remember the Land, another song which could easily garner comparison with Joanna Newsom, not just for its length but for the apparent ease with which it bears its own weight of complexity, and the way it revels in its suite-like structure without ever feeling constricted by it. It’s the most ambitious piece on an album full of ambition, but Young never lets that ambition blind her to the importance of her message or the sheer delight of her songcraft. Umbelliferæ is the work of years: a wise, joyous epic.
Umbelliferæ (27th September 2024) Meaw Records
Pre-Order via Bandcamp: https://kateyoung.bandcamp.com/album/umbellifer
Pre Save: https://ffm.to/e1dr2bd
Kate Young Tour Dates
Kate Young will tour the UK in September and October with her International string quintet hailing from Sweden, Austria, Slovenia and France.
24th Sept – Worthing Pavillion, Worthing
25th Sept – The Welfare, Swansea
26th Sept – The Slaughtered Lamb, London
28th Sept – ALBUM LAUNCH Stockbridge Parish Church, Edinburgh
29th Sept – The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow
1st Oct – The Tolbooth, Stirling
2nd Oct – Highfield Trinity Church, Sheffield
3rd Oct – The Met, Bury
4th/5th Oct – Hartlepool Folk Festival
