I’ll admit that before this album crossed my desk I hadn’t heard of Bridget Hayden before, but I’m always willing to take a listen to anything new on the folk scene, particularly as that scene is currently experiencing something of a purple patch. Having said that, anyone who has heard of Bridget before will know that she is usually more associated with lo-fi noisy drones, reverb-heavy blues and feverish waves of doom-laden sound, so this album of traditional folk appears to be going off on something of a tangent.
Cold Blows The Rain is a precipitation-swept collection of eight folk songs that combine Bridget’s evocative vocals with the traditional instrumentation of The Apparitions. While it may sound as if it was recorded in a studio, the album was actually captured live in one week during the summer of 2022 in Bridget’s local town hall in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
There is a lot of space on this album, nothing is rushed, everything falls exactly where it should. Bridget’s vocals climb, swoop and fall over instrumentation that is sparse but perfect, bowed and plucked violin and droning harmonium. The songs shift along two axes, the mournful, haunting melancholy of “Lovely On The Water”, “Are You Going To Leave Me” and the particularly wonderful rendition of “Factory Girl” contrasting with the more bluesy, almost bluegrass-tinged tracks such as “Blackwater Side” and “She Moved Through the Fayre”.
Cold Blows The Rain is intended to reflect the drizzly moors and wind-swept hills of Yorkshire, and that it does; but it also suggests at times those moments when the sun breaks through and the heart swells. It’s a gorgeous record, and I recommend it to anyone looking for something to accompany their winter hibernation.
-Dave Pettit-
