THE DUCHESS EP by TREMBLING BELLS

Ahead of a new album, The Marble Downs — recorded with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy — Glasgow’s Trembling Bells returns with an eight-song vinyl-only EP. Entirely exclusive music, unique to this release, with a lovely silk-screened sleeve, the Duchess EP is effectively divided into two halves.The first is comprised of four songs from The Marble Downs sessions, with Will Oldham duetting with Trembling Bells singer Lavinia Blackwall. Oldham first met Trembling Bells’ principal songwriter Alex Neilson back in 2005, when the former produced Alasdair Roberts’ No Earthly Man, and Neilson was drummer. Neilson went on to play drums with Oldham himself, before forming Trembling Bells in 2008. Three of the EP's Oldham collaborations are original compositions: the infectious canter of Too Old To Die Young; a stately, parlour-room kiss-off entitled I’ll Be Looking Out For Me; and the beautiful, unaccompanied folk lullaby Tincture Of Tears. Kicking off eponymously is a brooding, baroque-country reinvention of Scott Walker’s Duchess. Anyone listening to the songs that comprise the other side of the Duchess EP would be forgiven for thinking they were newly unearthed trad. In fact, their genesis dates back to Neilson's chance encounter with vocal quintet Muldoon’s Picnic, at an open mic evening in Glasgow. Inspired by what he heard, Neilson “very quickly” wrote a number of songs, including those performed here by Muldoon’s Picnic, together with Alex and Lavinia. A shared love of The Watersons seems to pervade the dewy dawn incantations of (There’s Nothing Nobler Than) Yorkshire In October and Dancing On The Breath Of God — whilst Bells Of Oxford and Tuning Fork Of The Earth further underscore Neilson’s intuitive connection to the tradition of British folk song.