by David Wilikofsky
I’ve spent a lot of time indoors this year, specifically inside my small apartment. Although I’m what you might affectionately call an “indoor kid”, even for me it’s been a bit too much. I miss going outside and breathing fresh air without a mask. I miss being in nature (spoiler: New York City is the worst possible place to experience nature during a global pandemic). Two things have been giving me comfort recently: the thought that it will soon be too cold for me to want to be outside, and Sally Anne Morgan’s new album Thread. Morgan has been playing for years in both House and Land and The Black Twig Pickers, two groups who each put their own spin on folk tradition. With Thread, Morgan’s debut solo album, she has put together a stunning statement, a modern folk record filled with delicate melodies and swirling psychedelia.
Morgan balances folk traditions with experimentation throughout the album. On the surface opener “Polly on the Shore” could easily pass for long lost Fairport Convention cut, but there’s also a deeply lush, psychedelic undercurrent to the track. The song dreamily drifts along until it slowly dissipates, like the sun clearing the fog. There are a few other cuts in a similar vein, but some of the album’s most affecting moments come from its less traditional material. “Garden Song”, my favorite cut on the album, is a sun-kissed masterpiece of avant-folk. Over gently strummed guitar and gentle fiddle, Morgan meditates on the beauty of her garden. You feel the sun beat down and the grass gently sway in the wind. As the song continues, the lyrics takes on a larger weight. When she sings “Nothing is a weed inside my garden / Everything is free inside my garden” she’s talking as much about her literal garden as some sort of utopian vision.
It’s striking how distinct each track feels. The album plays like a kaleidoscopic vision of folk music, with each track pulling from different traditions and sounds. There are fiddle tunes (“Sheep Shaped”, “Sugar In The Gourd”), sparse soundscapes (“Ellemwood Meditation”), lilting folk songs (“Thread Song”, “Polly On The Shore”) and more contemporary-sounding singer songwriter fare (“Garden Song”). While this sounds cluttered on paper, in reality it isn’t. Morgan’s fiddle and voice form the backbone that ties everything together, and rather than feeling like a hodgepodge of sounds the album uses its sonic diversity to set up a dialog between the past and the present. No single track exemplifies this more than Morgan’s take on “Annachie Gordon”, a Scottish folk song that here sounds utterly lush and contemporary, but the sequencing of the album also helps facilitate this dialog. This is forward looking music that is still deeply rooted in tradition.
My earlier nature metaphors were no accident; this is an incredibly organic set of songs. It’s been such a comfort to me because it conjures up the same type of tranquility and beauty you can get from getting lost in the woods or sitting in a quiet field. Although COVID delayed its initial release date, it feels like there’s never been a better moment for an album like this to drop. It’s a balm for these trying times, an album to escape into and get lost in.