Emerald Ground Water - The World Below (2025) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. The World Below
02. Trillium
03. Cailleach
04. Creature
05. Snake Song
06. Curse of Macha
07. The Tower
08. Rusalka

Swirling mist clears on a verdant, windswept expanse. A woman in an embroidered, bishop-sleeved myrtle-green dress faces a rising sun. Invoking druidic ancestors while performing an arcane pagan rite, she sings of spirits, fairies, trees, primal femininity, death and magic long forgotten. Her name is Katy Hellman — at least in this lifetime.

The Burlington singer-songwriter has helmed several local projects, such as free-bleeding indie-rock band Julia Caesar and psych-rock follow-up the Burning Sun (formerly known as Ruby). Her latest evolution, a Celtic-folk/progressive-rock band called Emerald Ground Water, is perhaps her most conceptual. The group's debut, The World Below, contains eight shape-shifting songs that morph from firelight fables into rock explosions.

Hellman's passion for Celtic mythology is all over her new album and its accompanying digital booklet. In Old English typeface, she explains the folklore at the album's core through poetic mini history lessons. She references the seasonal celebrations of Beltane and Samhain, the Ulster Cycle heroic saga, the deforestation of Ireland, and a lengthy list of books, albums, podcasts and other works that comprise the Emerald Ground Water oeuvre.

Backed by a band appropriately outfitted with fiddle, tin whistle and harmony singers, Hellman brings the songs to life with powerful glottal stops and traditional ululation. These techniques were always part of her singing style, but they've never been more prominent or appropriate.

Beginning with a rallying cry of historical reverence on the opening title track, Hellman whisks listeners through the time stones at Craigh na Dun like a singing Diana Gabaldon. But the artist's magic harks back much further in time than Outlander's Jacobite Rebellion era. The World Below feels rooted in a more ancient time, when people believed in spirits such as the divine crone centered on Cailleach. Haunting and dirgelike, the song warns of the Cailleach's wintry power spreading from her leaden footsteps. The track is Emerald Ground Water at their most traditional.

At the other end of the spectrum are songs such as Curse of Macha, a stylistically modernized folk ballad with growling bass and a punctuated backbeat. Also about a powerful feminine entity (the legendary Macha, wife of Cruinniuc), the song's lyrics continue the album's through line of wronged women and the consequences of injustice.

Warm and bursting with wisdom, The World Below presents earthy folk-rock (Trillium) and old-fashioned sea shanties (The Tower) alike. Hellman remains a powerful leader with an ever-expanding sonic palette.

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