The Henry Girls - Tracks in the Snow (2025) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Welcome to Winter
02. Icicles
03. Walking Through Winterland
04. Wolves in the Forest
05. Don't Reach for the Stars
06. Wonderful, Magical Sky / Aurora
07. I Love to Ski
08. Tracks in the Snow
09. Snow Bear
10. Where Will the Animals Go?
11. Hibernate
12. Hot Chocolate

Originally a children’s winter show commissioned in 2015 by The Ark Cultural Centre for Children in Dublin and funded by the Arts Council, Tracks In The Snow is an extension of the EP of the same title by sisters Karen, Lorna and Joleen McLaughlin, the latter adding harp to her siblings’ fiddle, piano, ukulele, accordion and xylophone, accompanied by Rohan Armstrong sharing double bass duties with Dave Redmond, drummer Liam Bradley and Matt Jennings and Donal McGuinness on tenor saxophone and trombone, respectively.

As per its mission, it’s very much for younger audiences, with easy to join in with lyrics and actions built around a theme of winter and animal, appropriately opening with the jaunty piano led, brass coloured and surely ABBA-tinted ‘Welcome To Winter’ (“Woke up in the morning and I couldn’t feel my toes/I couldn’t feel my fingers and I couldn’t feel my nose/Stayed under the covers as I pulled on my clothes/I don’t want to get out of bed”), the shivers giving way to joy (“I rolled and tumbled in the snow/In my fun and play/I was white from head to toe/The fairy lights are glowing bright/I get a magical feeling inside”).

Xylophone tinkles drip through ‘Icicles’ with its melting waltzing melody (“Sharp and point, shiny and bright/You can see them day and night/Just like diamonds in the snow”), carrying Danny Elfman musical hints.

A musical grotto of piano and harp, the cooing chorus swayalong ‘Walking Through Winterland’ with its images of holly, ivy and Christmas trees invites children’s physical responses as snow falling and bells ringing, the shimmering tinkles continuing into the magical music box melody and atmospheric swirls of the near five-minute double bass and vocally tumbling jazz jive ‘Wolves In The Forest’ with its midway spoken passage, a song that introduces the word ‘palpitate’ into its audience’s vocabulary.

The following four songs are all from the original EP, the first being the ukulele-strummed and cascading keyboard notes of ‘Don’t Reach For The Stars’, a Boswell Sisters jazzy-swing ode to the night sky diamond twinkles, though I’m not sure the line “don’t reach for the stars” isn’t a touch anti-aspirational.

Again of a 40s jazzy persuasion with its double bass (solo), close harmonies and melodic scurries, featuring both harp and double bass solos, ‘I Love To Ski’ is pretty much self-explanatory and sounds like it should belong in some old Hollywood Christmas musical. Showcasing their harmonies, ‘Wonderful Magical Sky/Aurora’ is initially unaccompanied with the latter mostly instrumental half bringing in percussion shimmers, spares piano notes and waltzing harp undertones. The fourth is the album title, an action song somewhere between ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt; and ‘Where’s Wally’, as the lyrics get the children to try and work out which animal left the tracks (“They’re too big to be a rabbit/there are no bears this time of year/One thing I know for certain though/It’s not a bumble bee… Could it be a fox, a dog?/Maybe a squirrel or cat?”), before realising they’re their own footprints.

Honing in on ursine territory, a frisky double-bass drives the jazzy, skittering ‘Snow Bear’ (“Well the little bear rolled around outside in the soft and powdery snow/Then he went down to the water’s edge, a place he didn’t know/A friendly seal called to him ‘jump in and give it a lash!’/The little bear smiled and jumped right in/Made a great big SPLASH!”), inspired by Catherine Allison and Piers Harper’s book of the same title, featuring family members’ vocals and again drawing on their love of 40s big band female harmonies.

Winter being a frequently harsh time of the year they stay with the wildlife with the dreamy, softly sung “Where Will The Animals Go?’, asking the children to think about those who don’t have the comfort of a warm bed to snuggle into when “it starts to snow and the temperature drops” and “all the leaves have fallen and withered away/The green grass is fading and the sky has turned grey/There’s no food on the trees or even the ground”. Having introduced themes of migration and hibernation, it heads into the brief uptempo bustling breathlessy sung swing of ‘Hibernate’ before finally curling up with the similarly arranged, gospel-grooved, double bass funky and brass punching ‘Hot Chocolate’, the cream on the top of an album that proves a delight whatever age you may be.

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [mp3]

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac]

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [Hi-Res]