The Twilight Of A New Night with Kirsty Merryn
It’s early in the summer of 2020, and like a lot of people I had nothing better to do than scroll Twitter, when I came across an artist who’d just released their album. It was a concept album, a journey through night-time which starts at Twilight and ends at Dawn. I listened to the whole thing straight away, but even by the end of the first song I knew I had to buy a copy. This is the story of ‘Our Bright Night’ by Kirsty Merryn.
Folk artist Kirsty Merryn has been releasing music at least since her four track EP ‘Just The Winter’ in 2013. Her debut album ‘She & I’, produced by Gerry Diver followed in 2017. An album of eight original songs, they all centre around the stories of women from history, including Annie Edson Taylor who was the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive. Other figures spoken about range from Victorian spiritualist and artist Georgina Houghton and Henrietta Lacks. The latter an American woman who passed away in 1951 and whose stem cells have continued to reproduce, though were taken without her consent and are still used today.
Concluding 2018, Kirsty Merryn released her own recording of the traditional piece ‘The Cherry Tree Carol’ performed a cappella. Though the Spring 2020 tour for ‘Our Bright Night’ was cancelled, the album was released as planned and was even featured as The Guardian’s Folk Album of the Month. Produced by Alex Alex and featuring contributions from Phil Beer and Sam Kelly, Our Bright Night keeps piano at its core, as evidenced by its opening track…
That first chord is like waking up from a restful sleep, except you’re not waking up in the dawn of a new day, but the ‘Twilight’ of a new night. The deep and warm tone of the piano is second to Kirsty Merryn’s choice of chords, and the way she plays them. Without you realising, Merryn gives her solo piano piece rhythm with added accompaniment from Phil Beer on violin and acoustic guitar by Alex Alex. ‘Here I go again…’ Kirsty’s vocal is performed seemingly effortlessly with harmonious voicings added by Alex Alex. There’s a twinkle of percussion, like a windchime turning in the breeze, and soft synthesizer textures which are performed by Merryn and Alex Alex across this record.
If you were to listen to this album seamlessly, you’d miss the transition between Twilight and ‘Banks of the Sweet Primroses’ as I did. The piano from the end of Twilight continues here, even though all the other instruments stop rather abruptly, though it doesn’t feel that startling when you’re lost in the moment. Here we’ve come to the first of two traditional folk songs on this album. Also continuing to play violin, Phil Beer has more of a spotlight here amongst the shake and rattle of percussion and Alex Alex echoing Merryn’s vocal.
This recording of ‘Constantine’ is a remake of the song featured on Kirsty Merryn’s ‘Just The Winter’ EP. With a slightly broadened arrangement, this album rendition is the definitive version of this track. If you were to purchase Our Bright Night on CD, the album’s liner notes give more context to these songs, with Constantine referred to as ‘a love song to a beach in Cornwall’.
‘Hold me in your arms, only you can keep me safe…’
Alex Alex adds brief passages of acoustic guitar and harmonises with Merryn as well as singing a verse of his own. His voice is gentle and perfectly aligns with the music the pair have created here. The background atmospherics are not to be forgotten either, with keyboard sounds giving more imagery to Kirsty Merryn’s lyrics.
The upbeat ‘Mary’ is a perfectly placed change of pace, though the subject matter isn’t quite so. Mary is largely a courting song, but set in the near future and makes reference to the damage humankind has inflicted upon the environment and how that will affect future generations. Already the world has changed drastically in living memory, so how will it look within our own lifetime?
Mary too is far more rhythmic than Our Bright Night’s preceding tracks, this one being the first to feature a full drum kit. Whilst piano remains the driving force of the music, acoustic guitar strums throughout and goes hand in hand with percussion. The arrangement is broader still with Kirsty Merryn providing a layer of backing vocals, making Mary a true band piece.
‘The dissolution of the monasteries also saw convents shut down, which were home and sanctuary to many women. Today, people around the world are also seeing their sanctuaries closed, and vital lifelines shut down.’ – Kirsty Merryn (Our Bright Night liner notes)
The musically sparse title track is soundtracked by Kirsty Merryn’s shruti playing, an instrument which creates a drone as heard throughout this song. With added bursts of soft piano and keyboards, it is Merryn’s lyric that is the focus of Our Bright Night. Written from the point of view of a woman living in a convent during Henry VIII’s reign, Kirsty’s character attempts to rally her sisters with courage, despite the certainly dire situation. This is one of the most moving pieces of music on this album.
Opening with rare electric guitar, the clean sound of the amplified instrument is a welcome sonic change from its acoustic counterpart. Musically, ‘The Deep | The Wild | The Torrent’ is atmospherically structured, with the guitar and piano holding the fort while distant reverberations float in the ether.
In terms of story, another character is introduced in Our Bright Night, that of a monk who looked out from his retreat ‘at the world around him and saw beauty and music.’ Partly inspired by a trip to St. Ouen in Jersey, Kirsty’s descriptive lyrics are what make this such a majickal piece of music. The opening lines read:
‘When a sea bird calls, and the thicket thaws beneath it, and the twilight turns, turning black through dusky peaks and the wind it blows high, oh The Deep, oh The Wild Torrent.’
‘There was a man come from the North, he came one day to me. He said he’d take me to his home where he would marry me…’
‘Outlandish Knight’ is the other traditional song on Our Bright Night, concerning a man who tempts away a young woman from her home in order to drown her as he’d done previously to six other women. Only this time, it’s the man who falls victim to the woman, who lays his body in the water, and the track finishes ominously with the sound of waves washing the shore…
I am enamoured with the chord progression in ‘Little Fox’, how the percussion interacts with the rhythm set by the piano, the addition of tuned percussion, and how you can hear the sound of the room where the drum kit was recorded. Billed as ‘a love song for the anxious’, the mood fits right in with everything else on Our Bright Night, as if the thought came whilst walking the banks of a reedy river. Little Fox feels like it’s over too soon as the tuned percussion fades out.
Written by Kirsty Merryn, ‘Shanklin Chine’ could well have been a traditional folk song. It tells the story of a sailor who loses his life at sea during the battle of Tamatave and subsequently visits his sweetheart whereby she faces the choice to live on, or join him in the afterlife. The voice of the sailor is played by Sam Kelly, who helps to make this a true love song, if a slightly spooky one. Kirsty Merryn and Alex Alex yet again make all the right production decisions, layering light percussion and synth lines without overshadowing the story told in the lyric.
Beginning immediately with Merryn’s vocal, she sings of a desperate man who seeks to take back his family’s gold that was stolen and taken to London town. Though without gold, how will the man get there to retrieve it? Alex Alex adds backing vocals and acoustic guitar to Merryn’s piano with the jangle of tambourine. If you listen closely, there is the drone of more shruti and clean electric guitar towards the end of ‘The Thieves Of Whitehall’. A special mention must be given to Ben Walker for his beautiful mix across this album, as well as Nick Watson’s mastering which preserves all the dynamic clarity in Kirsty Merryn’s music.
‘Now your feet move on, while mine are abiding…’
Kirsty Merryn lists ‘The Wake’ as being for Gary Mitchell, and little more explanation is required. One of the simplest pieces on Our Bright Night, Merryn’s vocal is at its most intimate, a comforting lament where you can’t help but feel she is speaking directly to you, even though she’s not. I love the way Kirsty weaves the melody into the words ‘don’t be afraid’, which say so much more in her expression of them. On an album of songs written at the piano, where the arrangements help to open out their meaning, it’s an endearing trait of these producers that they decided to leave The Wake to tell the story as it was originally intended.
And with the ending of the night, comes the ‘Dawn’ of a new morning. This piano instrumental has so much character for such a short piece. The miking of the piano and the mix displays more of the room’s depth than the clarity of the strings, which lends a certain fairytale quality to this music. This is all helped by giving the album’s opening chords something of a reprise, to bring the story full circle. And you know your journey is complete, until such time you revisit the tale - ‘Here I go again…’
With more than a year passing since the release of Our Bright Night, it’s only natural that this artist should have already moved on to a new project. Teaming up with the aforementioned Ben Walker, the duo are releasing an EP called ‘Life and the Land’ and are touring across the UK in September and beyond.
Read on for our Q&A with Kirsty Merryn where we dive deeper into the stories behind the music of Our Bright Night. We talk about the contributions of Alex Alex, the stylistic difference between Kirsty’s albums and the upcoming tour with Ben Walker.
1. Your second album 'Our Bright Night' takes us on a journey that begins at twilight and ends at dawn, were these songs all conceived to be part of this concept, or was that decision made later?
The concept for our bright night sort of evolved out of the opening track. I knew I wanted to open the album with an instrumental piano piece, and that I wanted to try and create something that was atmospheric and sort of magical, in the olde English idea of magick. One of the things I really love about folk music is how the magical and the real sit hand in hand, and that was something I was really keen to try and bring out in this album. As the piece developed it turned into a song about the twilight, about that magical time of the evening when the real and magical worlds come close to each other and it feels like anything can happen, especially in a forest - forests at this time of day feel like they’re whispering, like you can almost see faeries amongst the trees. From that, the idea of the album being a sort of journey through the night time came about. The tracks weren’t all necessarily written with that narrative in mind, but it was what I had in mind as I created the arrangements and the production of the pieces. A sparkly, dark sort of escape to faery.
2. You produced this record with Alex Alex, what was that experience like? How long did it take for the album to be recorded?
This was my first time doing all of the recording and production for an album, and it was a really great experience. Alex Alex (the stage name of Todd MacDonald, who did the photography for the album as well, and who is my partner in “real life") is a recording artist in his own right. He has a huge amount of experience, from playing in a punk band when he was younger to his current output, which is beautiful and ethereal pop music. A very different style to my own! His experience and background brought something very different to the album and it was fantastic working with him. He is also incredibly methodical, which I am not! She & I was produced by award-winning producer Gerry Diver, who has a very distinctive style and who is a multi-instrumentalist, bringing all of that sound to his productions. Our Bright Night sounds so different partly because of that distinctive sound, but also because in being able to produce it myself I could really craft each song to sound exactly how I wanted, and how they sounded in my head. A key element to this album is that I wanted the piano to sit front and centre. When I perform live it is usually just me and a piano, and I wanted that experience to come through in the recordings. In the folk world I’ve always felt like the piano is a little bit of an outsider instrument in some ways, and I wanted to showcase it. All in all, it took around 18 months to record the album, which we did in our little box room at home.
3. There's quite a stylistic shift between your first record, 'She & I' and this one. Was that dictated by the songwriting? Or a more conscious effort to make a sonically different record from your debut?
The stylistic shift I think has come from a few different elements. She & I had a very specific point of view - telling real stories about real women from history - which in some ways limited the scope of the kind of writing I was doing (but in a really fun way!). With OBN, although there is a broad overarching theme, I didn’t want to feel restricted about what I felt I could and couldn’t include, thematically. Writing for both albums was interesting and challenging in its own way, because of these different limitations that I set out as I went about making them. The production of course has a huge impact on the stylistic change, and my decision to put the piano at the forefront of OBN. I also think that as a songwriter it’s important to keep challenging yourself, to try new forms and ideas, to explore different ways of writing, and I think that decision to try and forge forward has probably influenced the shifting styles.
4. There are a couple of traditional tracks on this album entitled 'Banks Of The Sweet Primroses' and 'Outlandish Knight'. When did you first hear those and what led to their inclusion here?
I don’t think I could honestly tell you when I first heard Outlandish Knight and Banks! I’ve been listening to folk music for so many years, and I think they are both songs that you hear a lot in the folk sphere, in a huge and beautiful variety of forms, on different instruments, from different voices. They’re both such beautiful and evocative songs. Something I like to do with traditional songs is to rearrange the melody. I think there is something really interesting about hearing a song which is so familiar set in a different framework in this way. The arrangement for Outlandish Knight is centred around the repetition of a single note - the note that opens and closes the track, and which is played all the way through. I liked the feeling of dread this constant repeated drone through the middle of the melody brings to the track, and I enjoyed writing with that in mind. The Banks is an example of a courting song, which in a retelling today can feel uncomfortable to a modern audience - or certainly does to me! A man comes across a woman, minding her own business looking at some primroses, and decides he’s going to chat her up. Annoying! It’s framed as romantic in the song, but just sounds so annoying to me! So I rewrote the lyrics with that in mind - this young woman is out and just wants to be left alone!
5. 'Constantine' originally appeared on your EP 'Just The Winter' in 2013, what prompted the reworking for this album?
Constantine is one of the first songs I wrote, and it’s an old favourite to be honest - it’s also one that people ask to hear at gigs quite a lot. The EP I put out in 2013 was very very simple: just piano and vocals, pretty much done in a single take, so I felt it was time to refresh it and give it a bigger sound. I also think it fits well with the sort of magical intention behind the album, with the long history of this beach and all its seen laid out before the narrator seeming to come to life before their eyes.
6. 'Constantine' is described as a love song to a beach in Cornwall. What do you love about Cornwall?
Yes, a love song to a beach! It’s how that song feels to me, but other people are of course welcome to interpret it how they like. I do love Cornwall, I think it’s difficult not to with its incredible coast lines, amazing beaches, just generally beautiful scenery. I think that there’s this truism that being by the sea makes you aware of how small you are in the universe, but I’ve always felt almost the opposite (if I can say that without sounding like a raging egomaniac!). When I’m by the sea I feel most connected to the rest of the world, like I’m part of this huge and amazing thing, like we’re all sharing this vital and incredible power the sea has. And in some ways that’s really what the song is about.
7. 'Mary' is set in perhaps the not-too-distant future. Where the environmental crisis is concerned, what do you think is our most pressing issue?
This is a very big question, and one that I’m not sure I’m able to answer! I think in terms of personal responsibility, we have to try and do what we can in the choices we make every day, to recycle, to be mindful of what we’re consuming, to think about where things come from and what impact they have. I think the majority of people in this country (myself included) have really lost our connection to the cycles of the land, when things are available, when they aren’t, and we’ve gotten used to this myth of constant abundance. Intensive farming is causing incredible damage. Anyway, it’s difficult for me to really say what we can do, when the big changes have to happen at a political level, and unfortunately it seems that profit always comes before anything else. I just think we each of us have to make the changes we are able to make in our small corners of the world, and hope that those corners join up.
8. On parts of this record you're playing a shruti which has this beautiful calming tone, when did you first pick up that instrument?
I came across the shruti box a few years ago, and really loved the simplicity of it, and the warmth of that tone. I bought a beautiful version from an Indian maker, and I really love the extra dimension it adds to my performance. It’s a lovely thing to sing over, if you just want this moment of quiet, a moment where the melody of the vocal line is what you want to focus on. It sort of feels like a spotlight to an unaccompanied vocal.
9. 'The Deep | The Wild | The Torrent' was inspired by an area of St Ouen in Jersey. Once you'd visited this area, at what point did the song start taking shape?
Todd is from Jersey, so I have explored the island with him when we’ve visited his family. He took me to a particular grove of trees that he loves in St Ouen, on the top of a cliff overlooking the sea. It was a really blustery day at the end of the year, and we walked up to the trees as dusk was settling in. When we got inside the ring of gorgeous, gnarled old trees there was this eerie feeling of stillness, while outside the trees the wind was whistling and shaking the leaves. This experience also really inspired the opening track, twilight. I’m not sure when I started writing the Deep after the visit, but with the chorus of “oohs”, with the throbbing electric guitar and synths, I really wanted to try and evoke that feeling of the storm outside and the calm within.
10. The title track is written around the closing of the convents and parallels between life then and now, what inspired the writing of that?
A few years ago I was on a short break in Kent. I went on lots of walks in the local area and found the ruins of a monastery (it isn’t hidden, I just personally didn’t know it was there!). As I was walking around I was thinking about the dissolution of the monasteries, and the many people whose lives were affected throughout the country. It also occurred to me for the first time that the shutting down of these spaces would have probably also extended to convents. When you’re taught it in school they don’t really talk about that, just the monasteries. When I got back to the cottage I started researching online and found out that I was right, that convents would also have been closed down. For many women, a convent would have been a place of sanctuary - an all-woman space in a very male world. Women would have run from unwanted marriages to hide there, women who otherwise would have had no other place to go. This isn’t to say that they were not very complicated, there would have been women who would have perhaps not wanted to become nuns that would have been forced to go there, and I’m sure that there was corruption also...But in writing this song, I wanted to sing a lament for those women who had found a home and a sanctuary, who had perhaps felt like outsiders and had found this safe space, only to have it all ripped away from them. It’s a song of sisterhood, and of loss, of the end of something which will never return.
11. I'm equally fascinated by the origins of 'Shanklin Chine', what inspired that story?
Shanklin Chine really is just a good old fashioned ghost story! I love the tradition in folk song of the ghosts of lost lovers returning to say goodbye, often after having lost their lives at sea or at war. I wanted to write my own version, so settled on two places - Shanklin Chine in the Isle of Wight near to where I grew up, and the Battle of Tamatave, which was a sea battle that took place during the Napoleonic Wars. The ghost of a sailor who died in this battle returns to his sweetheart on the Isle of Wight, and invites her to join him in death. I was so lucky and delighted to have the amazing Sam Kelly singing the part of the lost Sailor in the track, I think he brought a real sadness and sweetness to the melody.
12. The shots by Todd MacDonald are a wonderful visual accompaniment in the album artwork, where were those taken?
I really like the artwork too! The photos were taken in Glenveagh National Park in Northern Ireland. We had been on a walk through the park while on holiday, and were returning back to our van as the sun was setting (the twilight - again!). The light was so beautiful and I had this idea of standing in front of these darkening reeds with the purple sky beyond, I wanted it to look as if I was somehow part of this landscape, as if I was part of this blurring of the magical and the real. It was flipping cold let me tell you! But I’m so happy with the shot.
13. If you could make a music video for any of these songs, which one would it be and why? What would the concept be?
Although it would be incredibly long, I think I’d like to make a music video of the first two tracks - twilight into banks, as those two pieces really bring together what the album is about for me. Conceptually, I think I’d like to film something deep in an old English forest, something very dark and mysterious….beyond that though, I’m not really sure!
14. 'Our Bright Night' is very much a complete piece, are there any plans to present the entire album live?
OBN was released in May 2020 so the timing was really terrible! I had a full album tour booked, but unfortunately we only got to play a couple of shows before everything got shut down. It was a real blow, as we’d worked really hard on the album and the show for such a long time, but in the wider scheme of everything that has happened of course it was a small thing to have to deal with. I’m not sure if I’ll now tour the full album to be honest…once something has been out in the world for a while, things move on and it feels like people are already waiting for the next thing. It might be something I go back to.
15. Finally, you have an upcoming project and tour with Ben Walker called 'Life And The Land', what more can you tell us about that?
I’m usually a solo act, so I was quite keen to work on a joint project with someone else, just to try something new. Ben is an amazing musician, and I’ve known him for a long time now. He invited me to sing with him at his album launch, and I really enjoyed playing with him. We were chatting after a show, and the concept for Life and the Land was sort of born out of that conversation. We wanted to work together to take a look at songs about the harvest festival - big celebratory songs sung after a year of very hard work - and create updated versions. We wanted to create something very celebratory and fun, but also think about that disconnect we have with the land in 2021. As solo artists we’re both in some ways quite introspective in our songwriting, so we also wanted to challenge ourselves to create something high-energy, and quite a lot more in the English folk tradition than we usually make. It has been so brilliant working with Ben, and I am really excited about what we’ve created; the EP is being released on the 3rd September and then we are touring the show from that date also.
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To purchase a CD or download of Kirsty Merryn’s music, visit her store here.
For more information about the music of Kirsty Merryn including details of her upcoming tour with Ben Walker, visit her official website.
Follow Kirsty Merryn on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @kirstymerryn.
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