A new voice in London folk cements herself as a bonafide songstress with her debut album, Murmurations. The Mic's Releases Editor Ewan Samms explores the triumph track-by-track.
"Hello, how have you been?" The opening lines of Murmurations call to me as I find myself re-listening on yet another autumn night. The London-born Ella Clayton graced her debut album with luscious reflections on memory, morphing relationships and womanhood, all laden with her uniquely textured voice and a masterful cohesion. I find these songs to be the type that withhold, choosing to reveal themselves as they seep into your everyday, letting their lyrics sit and jump out at different times with each listen. The double edged sword that folk and indie music in a similar ilk to Murmurations presents is that, whilst one could argue it is the most accessible canon of music to add to, grab a guitar and muse on your musings, it is also a true challenge to add to such a vast practice in a meaningful way. Ella's done it.
The title track and opener of the album remains my top song of 2022. Murmurations wraps the album in a cute metaphor alluding to the movement of the birds on Brighton pier, Ella's University town, as well as all the little things you wish you could say to someone. The open-D guitar tuning, to me at least, is almost a folk right of passage, opening the album with a tried and tested sound world. If you can write a new song in open-D, congrats. I find myself singing this song to myself often, the melodies are so inviting in the way they fall and rise in turn. The lyrical content is viciously relatable, recalling those times that you've felt someone's return to a place despite your not crossing paths, as if the dreaming in your mind suddenly manifests in the way you always knew it would: "I've been catching traces of your face in different places where they don't belong." Ouch. The song builds slowly into a triumphant critique on time, it's evil propelling of change and the posing of a question moving to a statement: "All the things I didn't say, maybe it's better that way (?)"
"I've been catching traces of your face in different places where they don't belong." Ouch.
I was lucky enough to chat with Ella about the opener, and she had this to share: "I wrote it in third year. Brighton's quite bleak in the winter, so me and my best mate would go and sit on the beach and watch the birds. It's a bit of a letter to someone that you'd never send. I started writing about a specific moment/person and got stuck trying to get at the truth of the thing, so I asked my housemates what they would say to someone, unfinished business you know, and we spoke about it round the kitchen table and the song sort of finished itself. I was waitressing a lot and just daydreaming haha. I recorded it with Lester Duval in the Bunker Studio. We were listening to a lot fo Blake Mills and we loved If I'm Unworthy, where the drums come in right at the very end. I preferred to keep the strings out until the second verse so it all builds super slowly."
The band streams in with Always, a tracklist highlight and single. In bitterly relatable detail of jumping in the shower and feeling blue, Clayton celebrates the importance of friends in sustaining us in this life, and the simple want for the party not to end. Ella's vocals float and sink elegantly over the comforting instrumental in a truly soothing way. Mesmerist and He Moves Me introduce a modal flavour to Ella's writing, with a kind of acidic playfulness; the vocal melodies really shine here in an unexpected way, especially when you reach the chorus of the latter tune, with it's winding vocals and slinky guitar embellishments.
The opening chunk of the album streams into a spotlit silence with the stunning Womb Song. A powerful reflection on femininity with a moment of true beauty. The vocal melody is remarkably beautiful, if sourly melancholic. The arrangement builds as drums and bright guitars embellish Clayton's vocals, growing in intensity throughout the song and ebbing into a final repetition of the opening phrase. It's a lonesome recording and comfortingly cold, something that morphs into anger on For Any Man. Clayton confronts her lover's disposition and disconnection directly: "Just like you to miss the point, my words are wasted on you," before conceding, "but it's you and you're beautiful." This is not enough for Clayton to face defeat and change; a stalemate is reached. The instrumental shuffles in a folky build behind these confessions. Endling continues similarly with the proclomation that, "Oh I love you, of course I do, but this life that we've arranged, it's driving me insane." It's a truly mature musing on when to step in and put an end to a good thing turning bad, a lyrical highlight on Murmurations.
The back end of the albums gives Ella a chance to be more intimate with solo guitar-led arrangements. Wake Up lets her vocal and lyrical variations do cartwheels over a soothingly ambiguous guitar part, harmonically speaking. The wandering picking pattern lets Clayton weave line after line over it's soft texture. If you aren't convinced of her sheer technical skill at this point, even if it is all feeling at the end of the day, you are by this point in the tracklist. Only Bodies, another single in a different ilk, is similarly looping, in a pleasing sense. Somehow, the guitar part might actually be the catchiest part of the song. Space is created for Ivy Violet's immense bass part, poking it's head out between acoustic guitars and dreamy chord choices. Ella's vocals wind and wander in way I choose not to analyse, it is, truly, just very nice. There's a layering in the back end of the song which excites me over the idea of a sonically ambitious production where Clayton's voice is just layered indefinitely. Day After is another nicely arranged indie tune, with twangy guitar lines I especially appreciate. (it even has a super cute music video). The album ends in anger, you Foolish Man, ehoing the sounds of Florence + The Machine, Alabama Shakes and Bruce Springsteen thrown at a brick wall someplace in London.
Murmurations is a triumph. It's an album I've somehow been listening to against my will, weaving it's way into my daily routines as inevitably as the coming of Autumn itself. It's refreshing to be presented with a debut album where the artist places so much focus on lyrical content and melodic bliss so that the songs can't help but worm their way into your subconcious. It's an exciting release whose songs have found themselves in my playlist amongst the Joni Mitchells, the Leonard Cohens, the Adrianne Lenkers, et cetera. Whilst I remain quietly excited for what's next, (no pressure Ella), there's a dense tapestry of song in Murmurations, one which continues to speak to me in new ways.
Ewan Samms
Edited by: Ewan Samms
In article images courtesy of Ella Clayton on Instagram. In article videos courtesy of Ella Clayton on YouTube.
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