Liverpool Sound and Vison Rating * * * *
In the cultivated lawns and gardens that surround many a stately home, or even in the hard-earned and worked back yards of many a town’s terraced houses up and down the country, the sight of a well-kept lawn is perhaps a singular pleasure that is hard to replicate, the perfect haphazard inspired rockery, an allotment that produces a household’s requirements rather than giving in to the superficiality of giving in to the large, uncaring supermarkets, all that comes with this air of order is the gratification one receives from seeing The Wildest Rose take root and flower, blossom above all else that may sit and stare at the sun for warmth and growth.
This Sweetbriar holds many in its gaze, it draws attention and yet stands firm in its belief that all that surrounds it, from rock crevice to decked out paving, only enhances the view, a beautiful moment caught in a sea of order, anarchy wearing a silk dress and one that captures the landscape imagined by Odette Michell as she tends to this seed and plant with care in the follow up to her 2018 E.P. By Way of Night in the full length debut The Wildest Rose.
Across songs such as The Banks of Annalee, Rolling Shores Of England, Great Old Northern Line, I Once Loved A Shepherd, Light Up London Town and Dance Me Through The Night, Odette Michell is joined on the album by an array of players who see the gardener and the musical florist as one sensitive soul, are Phil Beer, Toby Shaer and Stu Hanna, who also takes the reigns as Producer and in this mix, within the scope of music-scaping the Folk ideal, what is noticeable is the gentleness of persuasion, a return to the natural, complex femininity relaying to the listener the point of planting the seeds in such a fashion that something magical will appear in the world of the strict and ordered.
The Wildest Rose is not only an enthralling debut, it is one which returns the genre to its roots, an air of calm driven by insightful prose and musical score, a field of roses could do no more or install more pleasure than the sight and sound of The Wildest Rose.
Odette Michell releases her debut album, The Wildest Rose, on April 26th.
Ian D. Hall