Lavinia Blackwal

Watch: Lavinia Blackwall sing”The Damage We Have Done”

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Enjoy the ethereal vocals and powerful lyrics of Lavinia Blackwall on her new single, ‘The Damage We Have Done’, a potent dose of folk-rock.

Probably best known as a member of the prolific Glaswegian psych-folk outfit Trembling Bells, Lavinia Blackwall released her debut solo album Muggington Lane End in 2020. The following year, after meeting Laura J Martin at Moseley Folk Festival and bonding over a mutual love of Robert Wyatt’s music, the duo Wyndow was born, releasing their debut that was likened on these pages to an experimental time capsule of beautiful melodies, ethereal vocal layers, and powerful lyrics.

Those ethereal vocals and powerful lyrics are still very present on Blackwall’s new solo single ‘The Damage We Have Done’, a potent dose of folk-rock, and a sign of new things to come. She tells us, ‘”The Damage We Have Done’ was inspired by Percy Shelley’s poem ‘Ozymandias’. It’s about the brevity we have on this planet, the fact that we can’t take anything with us, hoping to leave behind something meaningful and the hope that one day we’ll all meet again, the realisation that there is an environmental and spiritual consequence to the lives we choose to lead. We initially recorded the single at the barn around the time of the pandemic. I wrote it at the piano, but there’s no piano on the final edit. We went down a bit of a rabbit hole with this one, with strings, thumb piano, far too many guitar parts. I must have recorded the vocals about 60 times and was really struggling to get it right, but got there eventually”

Maybe heightened by the presence of the paisley, the chorus called to mind the cultural reawakening of the late sixties, although the message here is far more pressing. Like Shelly’s poem, it warns against the arrogance that often accompanies great wealth and power and reminds us of the transient nature of all things and that change is not desired but needed; the weight of that message is felt throughout.

The single is out tomorrow, March 29th, ahead of her UK tour, which commences on April 2nd (dates below).

Lavinia Blackwall Tour Dates

APRIL

Sun 2nd – Birmingham Kitchen garden cafe

Mon 3rd – The Castle Hotel Manchester

Tues 4th – The Ferret Preston

Thurs 6th – The Golden Lion Todmorden

Fri 7th – The Piper St Leonards

Sat 8th- The Glad cafe, Glasgow

Ticket Links

More Information

 

Source: Watch: Lavinia Blackwall – The Damage We Have Done

The Quietus Reviews | Trembling Bells’ “Dungeness”

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

Trembling Bells have never been concerned with keeping with the times. Instead of angsty modern themes, they deal with gigantic archetypal forms like love and death, their clattering folk rock writ large in primary colours of bold, crashing chord progressions and songs studded with references to mainstream poets like Dylan Thomas.

They’re anachronistic, but not in a shallow way. Far from the psychedelic folk revivalists they’re often portrayed as, they’re much more redolent of a classicist impulse informed by lead songwriter Alex Neilson’s love for Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, which has in the past made for some potently emotive, sky-punchingly romantic music. Their last album, 2015’s The Sovereign Self made gestures toward more conventionally progadelic moves and scaled back on the impassioned folk tonalities, and that approach still holds some sway over Dungeness. However, while they perhaps aren’t producing skyscraping bangers in the vein of ‘Goathland’ and ‘Willows of Carbeth’ at the rate they once were, this album claws back much of the wonkiness that initially made them so unique. Continue reading →