Sealionwoman - Nothing Will Grow in the Soil (2024) [Hi-Res]

In 2018, Kitty Whitelaw of folk jazz duo Sealionwoman had just completed the dark, atmospheric debut album ‘Siren’ with double bass player Tye McGivern, inspired by the Scottish folk tale of the selkie – a creature that can shapeshift between the forms of human and seal. That was an oceanic album, but Whitelaw’s growing fascination with yew trees – and a visit of her own to Crowhurst – saw them return to the land. Five years on, their astonishing second album ‘Nothing Will Grow In The Soil’ arrives: exploring the role these ancient, strange trees occupy in our culture, spirituality and imaginations. Alongside this, Kitty Whitelaw’s forays into the deeper end of her register and the dark churns of McGivern’s double bass – strengthened by a raft of digital effects – build a crushing, nightmarish landscape.

At its heart, this album is an enquiry into how these strange long-living, perennial plants relate to our culture and history. “There’s discussion about their role in pagan worship, which was adopted into early Christianity,” This forms the basis for ‘It Rides A Horse’, on which she intones: “Bark is the flesh / Heart wood is blood,” echoing the consecration of bread and wine in Catholicism. “In my mind, when we were creating the track I wasn’t singing as a human being,” she says, “but perhaps from the tree’s point of view.”

Opener ‘Two Sisters’ carries shades of Scott Walker’s Bish Bosch; Whitelaw’s expressive vocal twisting amidst swelling drone, and a mysterious scraping like knives being sharpened. The lyrics are based on a recurring nightmare that Kitty had about wandering a desolate wasteland alone, with only two trees left standing in the far distance. As she draws closer one tree falls, and the standing tree “Who pleaded to the last of men” begs her to save her and ignore the already fallen sister who may be already lost.

Nothing Will Grow In The Soil generates its own thick, noxious aura through McGivern’s double bass. “You can get a lot of sounds from the double bass acoustically which sound like they’re coming from effects – scraping and distortion,” McGivern says of his attraction to the instrument. Through digital techniques like looping, he stretches these sounds out to produce swampy rhythms and cold, abrasive drones. While striking in themselves, they also lend a strange weight to moments where he returns to more familiar ideas from jazz and folk – the sudden arrival of dry, restrained plucking in ‘Butcher’s Broom’ - named after a plant of the same name, Ruscus aculeatus it is one of the only plants that can survive under the canopy of the yew tree. Its sharp leaves were used by butchers to clean chopping boards and floors to clear blood and sinew.

Tracklist:
1-1. Sealionwoman - Two Sisters (04:44)
1-2. Sealionwoman - Butcher's Broom (03:25)
1-3. Sealionwoman - River (03:03)
1-4. Sealionwoman - Charcoal (05:41)
1-5. Sealionwoman - Wise Woman (04:44)
1-6. Sealionwoman - It Rides A Horse (03:58)
1-7. Sealionwoman - Crown Shyness (04:35)
1-8. Sealionwoman - Bracken (05:31)