Hilary Woods may craft music that tends to reflect, meditate, and ruminate, but she doesn’t seem to rest much herself.
After properly arriving with 2018’s Colt, she has remained steadfast, with her fifth album, Night CRIÚ, arriving last week.
She remains dedicated to her singular take on Ambient pop (and more), trading in often murky songs that drift through dreamlike, yet frequently ominous, soundscapes, yet her latest work finds her painting in the most vivid colors of her career to date. Mournful, or at least wistful, feelings remain, but the album practically teams with bristling life. You can practically feel the gravity of each finely layered moment.
Woods was kind enough to walk us through that very experience. Read on for glimpses into her process.
- Voce
“Voce” is an affirming, chant-like vocal lament. Instrumentally it becomes more and more weightless as the song progresses giving way to a children’s choir singing its refrain in unison.
2. Faults
What begins as a quiet confessional on guitar, grows in stature with The Hangleton band’s glorious brass leading a procession up and outward from its heart centre. Collaborating with The Hangleton Brass band on this with Richard Baker leading was an honour.
3. Endgames
Droning cellos and glissando harp underpin close harmonies and a chugging guitar expressing endings as markers of new beginnings. It is the lead song on the record and its vocal harmonies are a centrefold to the entire LP.
4. Brightly
“Brightly” was written on a detuned guitar late at night, its lyrics written in the same sitting with Oliver Turvey on strings. A line from it “Let your health come first” was one of the first lyrics I wrote down on paper for this record and has served as a lyrical compass to try and live by ever since!
5. Taper
“Taper” brings light and new colour to this record, and I have all the children who sang on it to thank for that, it was a beautiful recording process with them and was very moving hearing them sing back my lyrics.
6. Offerings
A fragile hymnal sung by elderly voices that reach for notes midst dense texture and weighted organ, are an intentional counterpoint to the young voices just heard on “Taper”. The presence of intergenerational voices was intrinsic to the genesis of the record and to my intention of fostering community and connection within its sonic palette. “Taper” and “Offerings” have also always sat together in its running order, providing a context for each other.
7. Shelter
“Shelter”’s vocal and piano lines are embedded in layers of sonic fog and texture. Equal measures stark and obscure, it turns the record away from the Night of the title toward the interiority of the early hours of the morning when it is darkest just before daybreak.
