the story so far

The album title serves not only as metaphor for its cultivation but also as a nod to her Leicestershire heritage.  The botanical theme weaves itself throughout the album, with the final line of the opening a cappella number being, “where the silver birch grows to shade your remains”.  The song which the album is named after evokes imagery from the poem A Tree Telling of Orpheus (based on the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice in Greek mythology. An allegory for grief) by Denise Levertov. “…wrenched from the earth root after root, the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder […] We feel, as our rings increase, something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest leaf-tips further.  The wind, the birds, do not sound poorer but clearer, recalling our agony, and the way we danced.  The music!”

In many ways, it is a protracted coming of age album and ticking many of the clichéd boxes of the suffering artist; we carry our scars, our defeats and our victories into how we express ourselves.  We bring all our experience, all our hours, all our self-loathing and self-love into our craft.  The album ends on a note of hopeful, quiet renewal in D major in the last song, SOS (Saved); “Only you can save my soul tonight”.