Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.
Isabel Pine’s ‘Fables’ is pricelessly pretty and gloriously graceful from the very start. There could be no better place to be introduced to Pine than opening track ‘Wolves’. If this is what is in store for us, this full debut record will be a masterpiece of gentle and heavenly notes, coerced from her stringed instruments (none of which is safe from her sweeping elegance, as she deftly explores violin, viola, cello and double bass in her work).
It does indeed come to pass. There is relentless beauty here. Pine is a master of conjuring the spellbinding, the hypnotic, the softly spectacular. The best music, if we allow it, speaks to us in new tongues, takes us to previously unvisited lands, makes us feel somehow new, reborn, and vital. ‘Fables’ is one such gift to its listeners.
The tracks are all connected, all in love with sound and nature, depicting the coldness of winter in its humble majesty. The white on the cover only interrupted by slim trees and their shadows is captured so accurately in sound that no other cover could do it such justice. Pine has woven a musical fabric that feels worthy of being worn, a second skin, something never to remove.
There is a Max Richter-like superiority to what Pine explores, how skilled she is at getting something from nothing, coercing sound into shapes that will be returned to time and again. This must be a dream, so serene and life-enhancing are these tracks, one giant utopia of delicate sound.
The music doesn’t just invite you into the wild beauty of nature, it holds your hands, takes you with it, embraces the best thing we have on earth – the sounds in the trees, the creatures there, the celebration of quiet and hidden life. It is, in short, an antidote to the news, the catastrophe of modern life and its politics, social media mayhem, simmering war, post-pandemic struggles of all kinds. This is aural therapy like never before, and perfectly timed in its arrival too.
A modern classical album that is surely of unsurmountable quality this year. When it ends, it feels like a loss, a grave silence, the impeccable music having departed bringing only an even deeper sense of admiration for this immaculate collection. By surrounding herself with the cold wonder of nature, Pine has created warmth and humanity of rarely paralleled beauty. A faultless work that should witness a substantial take-off for her career, and without hesitation it should be added that, naturally, it is a definite album of the year already.
(Continued after Spotify link):
10/10
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isabelpinee
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabelpine
