Jenn Butterworth - Her By Design

With a list of collaborations that reads like a who’s who of the trad scene, Jenn Butterworth has become renowned as a guitarist. Now her debut solo album Her By Design sees her skills as a vocalist, composer, producer and arranger equally to the fore.

On it, Butterworth breathes life into a mixture of modern and traditional songs that centre the female experience in a way that defies the cliches and stereotypes seen in some parts of the folk canon.

Naturally her acoustic guitar work plays a role in gluing together the tracks, whether it’s the simple but effective hook on Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still or the muscular strumming familiar to fans of Kinnaris Quintet following the quirky rhythmic and harmonic turns on Sandy Denny’s All Our Days.

Then there’s the broken chords on Jeannie, an achingly beautiful retelling of Anachie Gordon featuring some well written string countermelodies against the traditional tune. The sweep and stab of the string quartet arranged and led by Seonaid Aitken are a near-constant presence on the album, lending an epic feel to the likes of Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still or Fair Maids of February, where they sit alongside deft mandolin work from Butterworth.

Though Her By Design is not the first recording project to feature her on vocals, it does put them front and centre more so than before, showing considerable singing talent: from matching the power of the full blast percussion on All Our Days to more subtle numbers such as Butterworth original One in Ten, where a wistful vocal describes the health inequalities experienced by women suffering endometriosis.

Better still are the passages of ethereal double tracked vocals on freshly minted murder ballad A Toast, or on traditional number The Housewife’s Lament where the multitracked layers of singing give collective voice to the social woe of unpaid domestic labour during a cost of living crisis.

With an impressive CV, Butterworth has already proved herself a more than able guitarist. Her By Design shows her talents don’t stop there.