Oak Now Willow (Denmark) – Purity (single)

Back in April we reviewed Oak Now Willow’s previous and first single, ‘Unanswered’ and rapidly concluded that the Århus – based quartet led by songwriter and lead singer Katrine Hald is capable of creating a quite unusual sound, a mix of traditional instrumentation and modern synthesisers, and of writing lyrics that read like poetry.

Here they are six months later and they’ve darn well done it again with latest single ‘Purity’, which they describe as “a self-reflective back-to-nature ballad wrapped in space echo and electric bass using a soft bow.”

‘Purity’ was recorded on a dark late night in the countryside. They say the song is about humanity gazing into the water and simultaneously seeing oneself, recognising that we ourselves are nature and yet often forgetting that connection.

Furthermore it’s about hearing the sound of purity in your name while acknowledging that being human inevitably involves being a lot less pure, indeed a polluter. And yet the river, the creek, the ocean flows through our reflection into our body and back into the ocean.

That’s quite a concept to get to grips with and before I read that take on it my interpretation was that it concerns the creatures of the land, rivers, lakes and ocean staring at us, in all our ‘refinement’ and wondering out loud how we went so badly wrong and how quickly we deteriorated after crawling out of those rivers and lakes and standing upright.

“Morning water crawling creed/What have you heard, did you see

Human nature human care/Disappearing into thin air”.

Whatever lyrical spin you put on it there’s no argument that Oak Now Willow understand perfectly how to create the right atmosphere for their thought-provoking material.

We scribes frequently roll out highfalutin’ adjectives like ethereal as if we ‘get’ exactly what they mean. We don’t. My recommendation would be to put aside any prior comprehension you had and just listen because this is as out of this world as it gets without becoming pretentious.

And a lot of that is down to the deployment of what sounds like a mandolin although none is credited so I guess it’s either guitar or synthesiser or synthesised guitar.

Whatever it is it shimmers on and off throughout and adds that little magical touch that sets aside the song as one of genuinely high quality.

There’s another sound as well but that one sounds like a member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia trying to play a didgeridoo. Ah well, nothing is perfect.

(Continues after the Spotify link).

Incidentally, I was intrigued to read in their press release that previous single ‘Unanswered’ had got airplay on Radio Mars. Can you get a signal from up there?

Find them on:

Bandcamp: https://oaknowwillow.bandcamp.com/music