(2022) Raine Hamilton - Brave Land          


Review:
Raine Hamilton‘s third full-length release, Brave Land, is described as “a concept album about mountains, and the courage and wisdom they represent”, and working with her string trio, gathers together the songs the Winnipeg-born singer and classically trained violinist released on a monthly basis over the past year. It opens on a soulful note with the pulsing strings and guitar strummed queer self-love anthem ‘Love Has Come for Me’ (“I know this face/And I’ve walked these floors/And I know that I should name it beholding so spectacular a thing/And I see that I can hold it all”), the learning of “how to be and how to stay courageous”, moving into Natanielle Felicitas’s cello-accompanied pure-voiced airy folk-imbued Joni-like title track with its celebration of and love for the land (“I’ve never seen a green this green before”) and the inspiration it brings (“sit with me and lift me to the sky that I might hear you… Offer the breaking of my bones the pouring of my heart/That I could be a channel of thy peace”). The notion of the artist channelling the power and mystery of the landscape is manifested in the dreamy, slow walk rhythmed Over The Mountain, which ponders on what is art before it is fashioned by its maker (“If I am the earth offered clay/Sculpted and thrown/How Lucky my shape in your hands/Oh and you listen/To what I have to say/To me, this silt and clay/You see me through”), while the mountains – and the art – offer connection and solace in times of trouble (“I am a shoulder to rest your head upon/When things go right when they go wrong”). Themes of a nature-based faith and epiphany percolate the album, heard in the joyous descending scales chamber folk of Believer (“There’s a face I’ve seen/As I shift my gaze/Like some life I’ve lived/Or some place I’ve been”), with the ancient hills, a natural treasure to be discovered, sparking “A flash of the familiar” and a reassurance that “later would be better”. Double bassist Quentin Bart also adds hurdy-gurdy to the bluesier It Matters, one of only three numbers to feature drums. Hamilton’s voice and delivery conjure Buffy Sainte Marie for a song that recounts a confrontation between a racist police officer and an Indigenous elder, Gramma Shingoose. (“You in uniform/Who hold their power over/Targeting the people/You surely should protect”) and a call to respect the land and the history it is built upon. The waltzing string trio sway of Try, a number about metaphorically wanting to move mountains, again speaks of connection to the earth (“Some days I feel it/A tap on the shoulder/Awakened I open my eyes…All things reflecting a light to behold/Stilling my body…Where all of our hearts are sent lilting, courageous/Where courage is born out of fear”).There’s a musical shift for the next two tracks, Mountain Henge a guitar-free Celtic-coloured paganistic hymn with an almost tribal undercurrent to the strings that you could envisage being performed around a circle of sacred stones at the solstice, while Dominae Sanctae is both written and sung in Latin, the title translation of holy women underscoring its paean to the women of her family who prayed in the language, Hamilton adopting a Renaissance style liturgical arrangement. Dreamer offers an old-fashioned sounding musical interlude that speaks to both her prairie roots and classical training, before the penultimate, stripped back folksy, lyrically poetic A Lover’s Word speaks of how what we say or don’t say in the heat of the moment can be as deadly as weapons (“I don’t know where to put you after that/Somewhere where the words don’t say what they seem/Some place where the damage justifies the means”) and of the emotional aftermath as she asks “Don’t you think you should tend the things you break/And at the site of disrespect/Don’t you think you should heed the words you’d said”. It ends with Eclipse, a song inspired by her experiencing a full mid-winter lunar eclipse in Alberta’s Banff National Park, manifesting itself in a pizzicato string, marimba percussive number that, perhaps also resonant with the pandemic, speaks of enduring and emerging from the darkness back into the light. Brave Land is an otherworldly and, at times, serene album that seeps deeper into your soul with each unfolding listen; it marks Raine Hamilton as a unique voice and songwriting talent; this is quite literally a landmark achievement.





Track Listing:
01 – Love Has Come for Me
02 – Brave Land
03 – Over the Mountain
04 – Believer
05 – It Matters
06 – Try
07 – Mountain Henge
08 – Dominae Sanctae
09 – Dreamer
10 – A Lover’s Word
11 – Eclipse


Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk
Country: Canada
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits

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