Susy Wall - Black Lights (2025) Hi-Res

After her excellent 2024 debut album THE SPACES IN BETWEEN, singer, songwriter and musician Susy Wall has produced an album that both consolidates the strengths and triumphs of her debut and delivers some surprises too. BLACK LIGHTS, with a song about personal and historic creativity and a pastoral instrumental titling the collection, celebrates the landscape and people of The Black Country. Recorded like Susy's first album at Chris Pepper's Saltwell Studios with appearances from Pepper himself, Aaron Catlow, Gustaf Ljunggren and John Parker with appearances from vocalist Matt Sayer and poets Claire Tedstone and Martin Kennedy Yates, the sound is sumptuous but not lush. There is a delicate airey atmosphere that recalls at times the lightness of touch of Joni Mitchell's Hejira.

The title track is a soft piano ballad, elegantly constructed with Susy sounding like a reflective Thea Gilmour. Lyrically "Black Lights" considers the light and dark of The Black Country's industrial past with Martin Kennedy Yates spoken poetry at the end an interesting contrast. "Glasshouse Bridge" is a dreamy pastoral excursion, as a walk triggers loving reflection. Wall's vocal is warm and draws you in with Chris Pepper's production wrapping in her a wordless chorus vocals. "Last Meadow" carries that pastoral reflection and love for a familiar landscape onwards. Susy's guitar and dreamy vocals swell delightfully in an acoustic masterclass underpinned by John Parker's double bass and multi instrumentalist Gustaf Ljunggren. "Home Child" has a soft surface as Wall's guitar and voice beautifully deliver the hard to hear story of one of the 5,000 orphans relocated from Birmingham to Canada. The beautiful classic double bass and acoustic guitar picking combination gives a tender edge to an uncomfortable history lesson. "Trick Of The Light" has a softer Folk Jazz edge with Potter's lap steel and Ljunggren's clarinets and flute featuring prominently around Susy's stunning vocal. Soft almost classical modulations of clarinet and flute wash around Wall's piano on the instrumental "Black Lights". Aaron Catlow's fiddle and the DADGAD tuning Davy Graham brought back from North Africa give a bit of old school Folk Rock menace to the crackling "Dereliction". "Blue" is a more introspective kind of menace. Soft and seductive Susy Wall opens with darker contrasting poetry from Claire Tedstone as the two ponder different notions of 'blue'. Tense, emotional and charged this was the track I hit repeat on the most, it felt like a theme tune or even a whole short story. Aptly, given the title, "Cosy Warm And Lovely" tapped into a retro lush 50s Patsy Cline, Kd Lang late night radio vibe. On an album of songs inspired by Susy Wall's Black Country, "Leaving" is a highly personal and very effective Folk Country song of separation loss, delivered with real feeling. That sparce, pared back feeling revealing real depth continues in the almost Gospel "Let The Light In" a tribute to Bert Bissett MBE. Guests provide a perfect foil for Wall's singing and songwriting with Catlow playing a charged violin part and Matt Sayer adding a second vocal on this beautiful closing piano ballad.

This is another rich and rounded album, full of imagery and ideas, incredibly eleven excellent songs and impeccable performances are over too quickly in a ridiculously short 31 minutes. Susy Wall has an incredible voice, a poetic way with words and delivers an album of powerful but understated performances that digs deep into the history and character of The Black Country. Writing about "Dereliction" Susy says she was inspired by "Kashmir" a song by a couple of Black Country musicians and two ex session musicians, you might be familiar with it. "Kashmir" clocks in at the best part of nine minutes. Maybe I have been tainted by double album wielding, dirigible obsessed hairy types, but I would love to hear more long songs like the incredible "Let The Light In", and spend more time basking in those divine atmospheres. You absolutely cannot go wrong this fine set of thematically linked songs or indeed Susy Wall's debut. Both are highly recommended.