A celebration of the Scottish Highlands, in refreshing new garb
The Strad Issue: September 2024
Description: A celebration of the Scottish Highlands, in refreshing new garb
Musicians: Laura Jane Wilkie (fiddle) Ian Carr (guitars, harmonium) Sarah Hayes (keyboards, flute, vocals) Joe Rattray (bass) Rachel Sermanni (vocals) Hannah Read (electric guitar) Alice Allen (cello) Pippa Blundell, Hannah Findlay, Gillian Fleetwood, Rona Lightfoot, Imogen Macleod (vocal samples)
Catalogue number: HUDSON RECORDS
Fiddler Laura Jane Wilkie is far from an unfamiliar figure in Scottish trad music circles: she has played in groups including the all-string Kinnaris Quintet and jazz/indie/Celtic collective Fat-Suit, among several others. But Vent marks her debut solo album – although even that description is up for debate, since its inventive, often surprising arrangements of traditional Highland waulking (or working, usually tweed-beating) songs are very much ensemble affairs, with Wilkie’s rich, rounded and golden-sounding fiddle often just one of its tracks’ many voices.
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She often stays low on the G string – beautifully husky in ‘Lift Up My Love’ and opener ‘I Am Sad in the Braes of the Glen’ – but when she soars, as in the vocal-sample-heavy waltz ‘New Story’, it’s with an unexpectedly bright, ringing sound. Ian Carr’s lithe acoustic guitar is often equally to the fore, though the two players intertwine beautifully in an unaccompanied duet in ‘The Sailor Has Good Chat’.
Vent is gloriously free in its treatment of the original waulking tunes – many of which don’t properly emerge until well into their respective tracks – and full of daring sonic choices, including a pillowy chorus of Sarah Hayes’s multitracked flute in ‘A New Story’. While it might feel like a missed opportunity to push Wilkie’s playing more firmly forward, it nonetheless showcases a musician with plenty new to say with centuries-old material, and the eloquent musical connections with which to say it.
DAVID KETTLE
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