Jane Weaver – The Fallen By Watch Bird (Expanded Edition)

Fire

Having manoeuvred most of her latter-day solo wares for Fire Records into increasingly sleek shapes — albeit whilst still retaining experimentalist edges — Jane Weaver temporarily turns back the clock with a re-curation exercise, to add a key chapter from her earlier work into the same label catalogue fold.

Hence, 2010’s The Fallen By Watch Bird reappears in a double-duration coupling with 2011’s close companion collection, The Watchbird Alluminate, which were both previously released on the Bird imprint of the now-expired Finders Keepers Records.

Although not totally removed from the kosmische-soul melodicism that manifested and brought broader attention on 2014’s ensuing The Silver Globe — with the prowling title track of the main album here proving to be a shimmering groovesome prototype piece for it — overall, this is a far more open-ended and otherworldly conception.

The rest of proceedings therefore capture Weaver and a handful of accomplices shifting through spooked synth-enveloped echoes of The Wicker Man score (“Europium Alluminate”); lushly layered madrigalist twinklings (“Turning In Circles” and “Hud A Llefrith”) and acid-pastoral prog with added traces of PJ Harvey’s de-amplified antiquarian modes (“Whispers Of Winter”).

There is also wobbly Radiophonic Workshop interluding (“Noctilumina”); hymnal campfire folk (“My Soul Was Lost, My Soul Was Lost, And No One Saved Me”); and balmy filmic symphonics (“Silver Chord”) to be found.

The Watchbird Alluminate reworkings sibling set unfurls as a warmly complementary suite, especially when aired back-to-back, featuring remouldings from Weaver herself and with outside collaborators, plus standalone reinterpretations from guest contributors.

Highlights within include wider weirder psych-minded renderings of “Europium Alluminate” and “Noctilumina” (both with Demdike Stare); Emma Tricca’s ghostly tremulous take on “Turning In Circles”; Magpahi’s beatifically wheezy rustic reading of “My Soul Was Lost, My Soul Was Lost, And No One Saved Me”; and an eerily deconstructed / renamed “Silver Cord” (with The Focus Group).

The combined end result is an affectionately assembled archival bundle, which documents a simultaneously earthy and ethereal transitional phase in Jane Weaver’s distinctive career to date that is entrancingly ear-opening.

-Adrian-