Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We all have that one particular place that sits in our minds and refuses to budge, turns down the invitation to move on and reclines back in the imaginary sofa and waits for you to give in and join it there, if not in body, then at least in spirit. It is the place where your dreams go when the time is right, where your hopes are always seen in full colour and each detail ever seen is carefully stored and reminisced about till the end of days; it is the memory of such fine things, of the music in the water and the crevices in the landscape that become part of the story as Lori Watson takes the listener for a ramble and rummage in the Yarrow Acoustic Sessions.

It is a serene amble but one with purpose, a walk that turns into the clearing of the air of that which has become layered with the frantic and the frustrated signs of modern living, it is the peace sought in a time and place in which you were most happy, in which even a dying sunset on the horizon was greeted with a cheer and the darkness as a chance to light beacons and encourage others to join in the pursuit for aural personal peace.

Lori Watson’s combination of fiddle and vocals is the serenade of the form, the line in the day where nature reigns supreme and where we should refrain from being seen, we should only marvel in the pursuit of the wind and winter as they shape the rocks like a sculptor manipulates stone to form an image of perfection.

With Duncan Lyall, Steven Byrnes and Fiona Black all contributing to the overall sound, to the soft chisel in the hands of a natural force and the sculpting of the land in which Lori Watson walks, songs such as Yarrow (A Charm), Fause, Fause, Fine Floors In The Valley, Capernaum and What A Voice (Blackbird) all resonate with a sense of the supernatural clay maker’s heartbeat, the surroundings being shaped by the inspiration of what our place of comfort should be seen to others as so that we might make them feel at ease in our favourite place.

Yarrow Acoustic Sessions is an album that matches all that you would ever hope for from a woman of such repute and intrigue, a piece of natural glory in which to take your time over and reflect within.

Ian D. Hall