February 2021 Album of the Month : The Rheingans Sisters

 

THE RHEINGANS SISTERS

Receiver

bendigedig [sic]

 

The Rheingans Sisters–Rowan and Anna–have been turning heads in the United Kingdom for a few years now. Receiver, their fourth album, shows why. Give it time before you draw any conclusions. In an age in which way too many musicians opt for artifice-driven theatrics, The Rheingans are the polar opposite. Theirs is the kind of music in which nothing much happens–just everything.

 

I was shattered by “TheYellow of the Flowers.” It has a drone fiddle, brief adornments from the lead fiddle, and voices. The sisters are from Derbyshire, England, though Anna now lives in Toulouse, where she studied French music. She was struck by the mundanity of things viewed from her city window, but the yellow of the flowers seemed to “shout life and vitality.” This is a song about hope amidst despair and, if you’d like, is also evocative of spring. What is indisputable is that it is eye-moistening beautiful.

 

The Rheingans feature a pan-European style of folk music. It often sounds minimalist, but that is deceptive. In addition to fiddles, they also play banjo and viola, as well as several unorthodox instruments. “After the Bell Rang” might sound as if there is a Hindi beat to it, but the percussion is actually a Basque txun txun, a stringed instrument that looks a bit like a dulcimer but is plucked or beaten with a mallet. That leaves a hand free to blow a three-holed flute. This song also has a tomorrow-will-be-brighter message. Here and elsewhere on the album you will hear what sounds like vibes. It’s actually a bell tree, a conical stack of chimes played with either a soft or hard mallet.

 

You’ll also hear Scandinavian music the likes of which one might expect from Norway’s Annbjørg Lien. “Orogen” evokes halling tunes–energetic dances–but the Rheingans give it a gathering pace treatment, adding dollops of background lilting for texture. If you’d prefer something icy and forlorn, try Östbjörka.” Or maybe you’d prefer something French, such as “Moustiques dans les mûres” or “Insomnia,” the latter of which is anything but. It’s actually a set of bourrées, double-time dances that migrated from France to the UK. You can cool down with “Waltz from Lozère” a slow tempo sashay.

 

At times, The Rheingans drift into experimental territory. “From Up Here” has gorgeous fiddle passages, but its unhurried tempo and droning atmospherics skirt the borders of trance. “Lament for Lost Sleep” uses piercing flute as counterpoint to drone, which serves to lay the composition in the seam between sleepy and melancholy. But make no mistake, whatever The Rheingans Sisters do, they want to hold your hold your attention so that you can focus on subtle and sublime small shifts. “The Photograph” is banjo and voice and “One More Banjo” is good picking, but just as advertised. I am tempted to say that the album’s summative track is the almost-languid “The Bones of the World.” As noted in the lede, it’s seemingly about little–just the spiny structure that holds up the entire planet.

 

Rob Weir

 

Postscript: My version of Receiver came as an MP3. You might wish to get–in the jargony parlance of the day–physical product. The CD comes with a 48-page booklet that includes pinhole solargraph photos from Pierre-Olivier Boulant. I’ve seen some of his work online and it’s both enigmatic and impressive.