Irish born and Bristol-based artist Sailing Stones’ highly anticipated sophomore album, exploring the complexities of matrescence, Slow Magic is out now.
Experiencing Slow Magic is like entering into another dimension. Here are songs that stare at the fire, linger in rainbows, fall in slow motion like comets. Their sounds summon up Bobbie Gentry’s country heat, Scott Walker’s gutsy spirit and Linda Perhacs’ uncanny beauty. Hazy woodwind, warm guitars and spacey electronics, fed into malfunctioning tape machines, weave together and glimmer. As they descend into layers of reverb, we’re pulled into the whirlpool with them.
The lyrics of Jenny Lindfors, who records as Sailing Stones, is reminiscent of when time felt both stretched and condensed, fractured and endless, in those strange, distant years when one has recently created new life. In recent years, there have been many other albums about matrescence – the physical, psychological and emotional transition a woman goes through when becoming a mother – but don’t dismiss this as a trend. This is more a communal recognition – at long last – of an experience that affects more than half of human beings in so many mercurial, mind-bending ways.
Describing the inspiration behind the album, Lindfors explains, “I bumped into someone I knew who had recently become a mother, and asked her how she was getting on. ‘Lonely.’ was her reply. ‘The loneliest I think I’ve ever been’. I thought about that a lot, and how isolating motherhood can be, despite countless interactions with other mothers on a daily basis. Ships was my attempt to bridge the gap, over surface chat into something deeper. It’s a song ascribed to the colour blue. It explores how I might share with a stranger the more profound feelings of motherhood, without oversharing. The backing vocals are provided by Rebecca Rose Harris (Samana) and Eline Brun (I See Rivers) on the recordings. The video features Sarah Tanat-Jones and Phoebe Curry on backing vocals. We perform in an empty St Georges in Bristol – voices in an empty chapel, in unison over great distance.”
Sailing Stones’ sophomore album
‘Slow Magic’ out now