I first listened to this collection of psych-folk jewels by Sharron Kraus, on one of the first truly autumnal mornings of the year. The sharp bite of the cold, the dampness of the ground, the stillness in the air around the crisp bright sun somehow seems the optimum environment to be enjoying this music. Sharron’s music, which of late has worn a delightful immediacy, simultaneously is at one with the chill in the air whilst it wraps the listener up in warmth. How she casts this spell I would not wish to deconstruct; it is there in the magical way her singing and more identifiably folky tunesmithery is juxtaposed to dissonant electronica and progressive sounding organs, recorders and synths, the effect is both soothing and unsettling.

That the album ‘Kin’ should exude an air of wide-open space and a sense of isolation could be thanks to it being largely written in response to the pandemic. There is an ongoing concern with human interaction and relations throughout as well as a keen awareness of the natural world. It seems to feel, as so many of us did two years ago, that there is a darkness to denial of person-to-person contact, with uncertain resumption, rather than enjoying solitude as a choice. Still, the absence of that connection did also prompt reflective appreciation of the good in human nature; ‘Kin’ concludes with some light breaking through during the song ‘A Kind Kind (Of Human).’ A funereal hymn-like piece that really does wash the face of the album and recognise that when “in a tight squeeze we pull together it seems.”

The album opens with strong echoes of early Steeleye Span on ‘Tell Me Death,’ a powerful song that asks why the narrator’s closest loved ones were all taken too soon but comes back with the tough answer, they just were. The message is sometimes there are no answers to the question “why”? You can only live in the present moment, so do not waste your season in the sun asking too much of the past or looking too far forward. Nevertheless try, as Kraus sings in this song, to hold on to some hope; “maybe I’ll live for long enough to find joy again.” Sharron does have previous for finding the hardest answers to the biggest questions, but throughout these songs she refuses to shy away from reflecting on “the ways we hurt.” During a song of the same name, roaming bass guitar patterns by Neal Heppleston and the dramatic drum punctuations of Guy Whittaker superbly help illustrate these bruises.

Sharron’s voice remains an instrument of pure, lush honey even while things get heavy, heavy. ‘Do It Yourself’ is like the bleak distant cousin of Paul Simon’s ‘I Am A Rock.’ But where Simon was determined to find strength in his loneliness, Kraus is positively drowning in the blackness of it all as she concludes “no losses, no ties, no tears shed when you die.” I love the way during ‘The Trees Keep On Growing’ Sharron observes that the still very much alive natural world was clearly not missing the human race, all shut away in their houses, as it wonders “do the sparrows ask where we’ve gone? Do the blackbirds mourn us?” The worst days of the pandemic may now be over but still in 2022, ‘Kin’ is an album perfectly weighted for the hard winter months in front of us, stirring us to feel the highs and the hurt essential to human existence. This is both a deeply resonating and serenely tranquil album offering both hope and clarity to the turbulence crashing around us, a quite beautiful piece of work.

Buy a vinyl copy of the album here: https://sharronkraus.bandcamp.com/album/k-i-n