Annelies Monseré - Mares

Fresh from her contributions to the much lauded Luster LP last year, Belgian folk experimentalist Annelies Monsere returns with what i think is something like her seventh/eighth long player, and first for Horn of Plenty having previously kicked it around with some of the European heavyweights (Morc, Stroom++). At it for over two decades, Monsere now feels both deeply committed and in full control of her sound, one that's deeply-embedded in European folk traditions but also feels distinctly her own and increasingly wide-focused. Close observers of Monsere's work will note the subtle evolution across her relatively prolific output, from the minimalist arrangements of her early forays to the now cavernous, drone-informed compositions of Mares, though it's telling that her voice often takes centre stage. It's a striking, quietly dramatic voice, and though i've yet to fully parse the meaning of the lyrics, we've at least her cover of Pentangle's Sally Free and Easy, which sits at the centre of the record, to serve as conceptual guide. Ghent, where Monsere resides, is a port town and there's the sense of ancient sailor song to Mares, the see-sawing drones of harmonium projecting images of the sea and the cultures to whom it might mean something. If that sounds like traditional fare, then know that Monsere is also pushing at boundaries here, too, taking folk melodies and re-rendering them in hypnotic structures that flit between the ominous and the soothing. Poetic as it is, i couldn't help thinking of Hamsun's Wayfarers, a novel concerned with the buttresing of epochs, of history sitting inside and against the present. It feels fitting of Mares' echoing waves of sound.