The intriguing thing about Flew Away is Maryen Cairns’s innate ability to create a song that simultaneously sounds like the most traditional folk song and the most forward-thinking slice of alternative acoustica. With only the most delicate and spacious guitar lines and her expressive voice, she doesn’t deliver songs as well as sonic create worlds.
There is as much of the timeless folk ballad here as a song looking for a new genre, perhaps even a whole new movement to call home. Alt-acoustic? Future-folk? Atmosphericana? It doesn’t matter what you call it; genres are so passe anyway, as long as you acknowledge that here we have an artist pushing more traditional folk styles into a whole new ambient realm, an acoustic player who is as much about the spaces as the notes, but too a musician who relays her narratives like the troubadours of old.
As she recalls the lady barnstormer of her youth, this female flyer comes alive and begs us to follow her into this fabulous alternate world. It’s like stepping into a storybook and becoming one of the incidental characters as we watch the story unfold around us.
Discover more from Dancing About Architecture
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
