Cassette, Compact Disc (CD)
There is perhaps as much healing in mourning as there is in celebration. In acknowledging that which we’ve lost, we’re reminded of the value of what we had, and can resolve to bring new love, gratitude ,and empathy along with us as we dust ourselves off and begin again to traverse life’s weather-beaten, sometimes disconcertingly open paths. It’s this profound grief and euphoria that permeates Queen of Eyes, the second long-player from West of Roan, featuring members of American folk collective Doran.
It bears the the sight of scar tissue in the light throughout, from “The Mountain” and its plaintive beckoning to surrender and reshaping of the self in the gestalt of existence, to the album’s sole traditional work, a version of “Let No-One Steal Your Thyme,” a warning to young women to establish and maintain the value of their finite time and personal boundaries, protecting themselves from the vagaries of flattering-tongued and false-hearted young men.
Across the album’s runtime, performers and songwriters Annie Schermer and Channing Showalter take the opportunity to further establish roots in that wider forest floor of the world’s living musical traditions. Rich strings underline the title track’s primitive calls to stocktaking and slowing down (“I’m not dying/ I’m just sick and sad/ And I must go away for a while”) while “The White Crow” is the most specific of a number of calls to the Irish and Scottish traditions, harmonium drones speaking to the Earth’s vibration as a world of accents and generational inheritance ducks and weaves about the duo’s vocal timbres.
There is much for any of us to heal from at any given time: mental and physical wellbeing amid the present moment; potential lost along more feebly-navigated stretches; uncommunicated needs and sundered feelings; involuntary isolations and self-constructed walls; generational disconnections and equally reactionary place holdings. West of Roan take this healing gently and purposefully, creating spaces for the listener to identify and articulate the nature of their own wounds.
It’s invitational in nature, as per lyrical allegories to gatherings and unburdenings throughout; not so much a succession of little deaths as questions of little rebirths—as liberating and freeing, given to growth, as it is emotionally charged and given to the ground—“in the silence that comes after/ Brightness, oh, the brightness of the sky.”
