With a clear love for all things harmonious and poetic, Kerry Andrews has used her background in classical composition to fuse them together in her alt-folk project We Are Wolf. In her debut album, 2014's Hawk to the Hunting Gone, Andrews explored birds, Keld follows a similar concept for her follow up. Inspired by freshwater folklaw, Keld covers traditional riverside folk songs such as Witch of Westmoreland and original compositions like The Weeper, which pay heed to Celtic mythology. There are tales of vengeful water sprites in the haunting George Collins and an equally sinister river in Drowntown.
Andrews also returns to her lover of the written word in Charm, a glorious adaptation of an Anglo-Saxon text. As with her first album, she considers both the beauty and darkness within nature giving her work continued depth. Comparisons to Kate Bush and Bjork are perhaps obvious in the way Andrews intertwines ethereal melodies and graceful lyrics and her musical style is equally unique. Her bright vocals are often nymph-like themselves, darting and diving creating a flowing tapestry of sounds. The album avoids employing a distracting production, choosing to focus on the vocals and storytelling elements that inspired this work. Keld is another sophisticated album from the rising star of English alt-folk.
Groupie Rating 4/5
