Clementine Lovell - Westbound

Likened to Joan Baez, Lovell’s trilling soprano is definitely evocative of the latter, though Anne Briggs and Shirley Collins are in there too. Born in Ross-on-Wye but summering in West Cork as a child, now based in London, Lovell discovered Irish and English folk through parents’ record collection and staring playing music in Irish pubs when she was nine.

Her paternal grandfather, the physicist and astronomer Bernard Lovell, introduced her to classical music around the same time and her love of music was fostered at a Waldorf Steiner School. At Cambridge she studied Archaeology and Anthropology, but while she went on to work as a Herefordshire Community Archaeologist, music eventually called her and she took up producing in the arts, founding a guerrilla touring opera company while living in Italy as well as becoming known on the UK opera scene.

Having briefly worked with the Royal Ballet and Opera as a producer in their Linbury Theatre, she moved to Suffolk, running the residency programme at Britten Pears Arts, where she first began writing songs and experimenting with her accordion. Eventually she met percussionist Carmen Ruiz Vicente and fiddler Duncan Menzies, the musicians who would form her trio, which brings her now to her debut album, produced by Marion Fleetwood who plays violin, viola and cello and also variously featuring pianist James Keay, Tom Leary on mandolin and bouzouki, Robbie K. Jones from Track Dogs on banjo, bassist Mat Davies, P.J. Wright on slide and Vo Fletcher on guitar.

Predominantly original material, it does feature two arrangements of traditional songs, the first being slow-paced, brooding eight-minute album opener The Cuckoo. It immediately spotlights the quality and power of her voice and underpinned by accordion drone, piano and fiddle, provides a cautionary tale to beware of false-hearted men, wishing them to “have pity on the flower when it dies”, the descending accordion riff evoking birds in flight with the a Swedish tune called Konvulsionslat (Convulsion Song) bringing it to a close. The second, with Ric Sanders guesting on fiddle, is also of an avian persuasion, a stately slow march folk rock take on the parting and pining Turtle Dove with her voice soaring over a swirling dramatic arrangement of piano and drums.

The first of the self-penned tracks is the sprightly fiddle and accordion-driven Land Army Girl which relates the story of how, at 18, her maternal grandmother, Pam Johnson, moved to Herefordshire just after WWII, and how she met her future husband at the village dance, the two falling in love and overcame opposition to their romance and made “sweet hay” together.
With Menzies on banjo and Wright on slide, the warbled, slow swaying Sister is a highly personal love letter to her sibling and the deepening of their relationship after their mother passed, those bonds resonating in those with their own children.

Featuring Jones, Fletcher, Fleetwood and Wright, the slow-paced, traditional-flavoured and atmospherically heavy Sparrow with its dampened drums and wheezing accordion is the third ornithological title, and continues the idea of her trying to hold on to her identity and find space for my creative self amid the sometimes overwhelming chaos of motherhood.

From birds to bunnies, it’s followed by the quasi-calypso lurching, skittering percussion Cottontail Hunting written for a friend going through hard times and recalling how, in happier days, he and her brother Tobias, who plays harmonica, would go long netting (an ancient form of catching rabbits) across the fields at night, the song a message to him that “I know it’s still there, that part of you where/You’re true to yourself, and your heart can be light”.

Fletcher strumming acoustic guitar, Fleetwood on cello and Menzies on ukulele, as the title suggests the poignant Time To Let You Go, with its Celtic folk colours, deals with loss and finding the strength to move beyond the grief.

Musically redolent of rustic cider-swigging, Leary on mandolin, John Barnett is named for
an old friend, who, with wife Rose, would play music at Bernard Harrington’s Cork pub in Glengarriff, the couple encouraging her to sing and play and inspiring her to take up accordion. Written for the celebration of his life held in the pub in April 2024, you can only wish someone would come up with something this good for your own wake.

Jones on cajon and banjo and sharing backing vocals with Fleetwood, the Loch Lomond echoing, accordion droning Here A Moment is also rooted in real life loss, telling the story of how four friends from the local community went out fishing but, none able to swim, when the boat caught fire and went down only one returned (poignantly he was in the bar when she sang the song), the song a carpe diem reminder of the transitory nature of life.

It ends, Sanders again on fiddle with strings-sweeping title track, another with rich Celtic colours, written after driving through a storm from Rosslare to West Cork to visit her father, still raw with the pain of losing her mother a few years earlier, and speaking of hope and the healing power of nature (and a good Scotch), ending with the simulated sound of a bird whistling into the promise.

Informed by her past work, her belief in the transformative power of music and the clarity and purity of her voice, it’s a stunning debut that effortlessly earns its place among the year’s best and firmly announces Clementine as folk’s new darling.