Reviews

Artist:Yvonne Lyon
Album: Growing Wild
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.yvonnelyonmusic.com

Her first album of all new original material since 2015 (her last album was a collection of self-penned and familiar Christmas songs), its title inspired by a Mary Oliver poem, this finds Lyon writing with some impressive collaborators, among them Boo Hewardine, the poet Stewart Henderson and Beth Nielsen Chapman. The opener, however, is a co-write with Julie Lee (who adds backing vocals) and Dan Wheeler, 'Winter Ground', a frostily crisp song about seasonal avian migration, followed by the more musically robust, cascading chords Sheryl Crow-influenced title track, one of two collaborations with Henderson, a slight 60s psychedelic flavour to its nature imagery infused lyric about escaping the confines that hem in your life.

Cello colours the first of five solo compositions, the gently, clopping percussion of 'Insignificant As Stars', another number with a wintery ambience, the others lining up with, first, the slow swaying Celtic shades of 'Compass Hill', on which Eddi Reader sings backing, another number about spreading your wings in search of healing and new starts. A similar theme informs the equally gently swaying, piano accompanied 'Enough' ("trust in the night when the light has all gone") with its lyric about rising above hurt and setbacks, again looking to the therapeutic power of nature, here the sea ("sometimes the salt on your skin is enough").

The third, the slow building ' Illimunate, with its trilling piano notes and swirl of overlaid harmonies and keys, continues down the path of resilience ("you have got to trust you have everything you need"), with, opening on what sounds like birds chirping and featuring Pete Harvey on cello and Seonaid Aitken on fiddle, the simple resonant fingerpicked love song 'Magnolias' providing the fourth.

Returning to the co-writes, here with Wheeler and Dan Lyon, 'Chasing The Silence' is a slightly huskily sung folksy picked reflection on the every-flowing cycles and streams of the natural world, a comfort as we ourselves grow older and the years pass by, that reminded me slightly of Judee Sill. Lyon also shares the credit for the anthemic, uplifting Celtic-hued skirl of 'Sail On with its choral backing vocals and steady drum beat, the title pretty much embodying its message.

Given it was the title of Beth Neilsen Chapman's 2010 album but never appeared on it, I suspect 'Back To Love' is one of the older numbers here, Chapman clearly evident in the the shuffling Americana and lines like "we're the king and queen of contradictions". If it is indeed a song that got lost along the way, its emergence here is a real delight.

The last of the collaborations comes from Hewardine on the gorgeous, breathily sung, dreamy slow waltzing strum 'A Bigger Heart', a classic sounding song about starting over and finding room to share love and joy with others and being more than you are.

It ends with the second Henderson input, returning to the theme of time passing and learning to embrace "the burdens and the blessings" as strings enfold the piano-accompanied 'We Accumulate The Years' with Lyon channelling her inner Janis Ian to perfection. Take a walk on the wild side.

Mike Davies

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