Bridget Hayden has teamed up with The Apparitions for her latest album of traditional folk reinterpretations. Cold Blows the Rain collects eight songs through which Hayden explores her past and the memories that continue to influence her steps in the present. Her emotional connection to these bygone eras of time informs her work, instilling a reverence and solemnity that frames the periphery of each song. The album is drenched in condensation and dew, the sounds of fog-shrouded woods and gentle precipitation on thinning canopies.
“The weather speaks the most eloquently about human loss,” Bridget explains. “It’s good to feel enveloped by something so much vaster than ourselves. The rain and the tears all become one.”
On their latest single, “Factory Girl”, they take on the story of a young man who meets a poor girl on her way to the factory where she works. Hayden’s mesmerizing voice and the glacial pace of the music makes for a disconcerting atmosphere, a place where evils may be hidden under cloak of darkness and where love is snuffed out by the shadows venturing forth from that same darkness. But this tale is left unresolved, the story left to hang on romantic notions. Plaintive banjo plucks wander around in the background, lost in a mist-covered world that echoes with the drone of harmonium and violin. It’s beautiful and haunted and littered with the ghosts of stories left untold.
Listen to the song below.
Cold Blows the Rain is due out Jan 10 via Basin Rock. You pre-order the album here. Follow the band on X and Instagram.
