Christina Alden & Alex Patterson - Safe Travels

Christina Alden (guitar, vocals, banjo and tenor guitar) and Alex Patterson (fiddle, vocals, tenor guitar, viola and shruti) started their career as a duo with the highly acclaimed debut album Hunter in 2021. Their new release Safe Travels is a collection of eleven tracks, all original songs that follow in the footsteps of their previous album and explores a couple more themes.

The whole album showcases the modern and evocative songwriting talent of these two artists over 10 songs and one instrumental, the bright fiddle-centred Raven Yard. Together with the themes of ecological consciousness and climate change, a key feature of songs such as The Old Weather Station and Crow, family roots and parenthood are a constant backdrop of their work, for example the poignant Etta’s Song and A Hundred Years Ago.

Despite being rooted in the folk tradition of these isles like their previous release, this second artistic effort feels more personal and introspective. It perfectly conveys the emotions, the struggles and the joy of the duo’s recent experience in parenthood, enveloping the listener and capturing fleeting instants of life in which every human being can recognise themselves.

The arrangements, always smooth but slightly more stripped back compared to Hunter, contribute to create the warm sense of familiarity that is the core of this album. A special mention goes to the opening title track that showcases beautiful vocal harmonies and that vividly summarises the main concept of this release.

Delicate, free-flowing and relevant to modern listeners, Safe Travels resonates with the audience of our times’ and keeps a window opened both on the challenges of the future and on the inner part of us that we sometimes prefer to ignore.