Isobel Campbell - Bow To Love - Limited Yellow Edition (Vinyl)

Isobel Campbell is no stranger to navigating turmoil. On her previous album, There Is No Other (2020), she re-emerged after a decade of label trouble with a gem of subtly questing psychedelic folk. Four years on, Campbell spreads her net wider on Bow to Love, a soft-spun yet sharp-edged set of reflections on modern crises that doesn't stop at diagnosing the problems: it goes further to ask how we might progress from our tense, conflicted times. With all the dexterity the Glasgow-born singer-songwriter and cellist is known for, the result is an album of lambent surfaces and choppy riptides, a deeply personal record for today poised between hope and despair. "The album is about what we're all in right now, and my response to that and my life as a microcosm within that," says Campbell, before suggesting how exposing modern horrors might prove purgative. "I think there's a quote from A Course In Miracles which says, 'Love brings up everything unlike itself for the purpose of healing and release.' Maybe these horrible things are coming up and out so we can get rid of them and things can be better." Her radar keenly attuned to inequities, Campbell spotlights toxic masculinity on the luminous 'Everything Falls Apart,' it's circling lilt and warm, fretless bass framing a call to unmask patriarchal power in readiness for "a brand new start". "My elegy to the patriarchy" is how Campbell pitches it, noting how "even the words we use to insult a substandard man will often blame the woman - 'son of a bitch', 'bastard'." The spellbinding psych-folk of 'Spider to the Fly' and 'Second Guessing' add themes of "narcissistic abuse" and "repetition compulsion", lending bite to the album's take on relationships. Some songs were first conceptualised in 2016, when Brexit and Trump exacerbated what Campbell describes as "real tension" amongst people. Between its gently jazzy shuffle and cushioning arrangement, the Yoda-esque 'Do Or Die' foregrounds fortitude in the face of gnawing anxieties. The rainy-day soul-pop of 'Keep Calm Carry On' also started in 2016, when Campbell was staying at her aunt's flat in Yoker and her then- husband and collaborator Chris Szczech texted her from New York about the Brexit vote. "Chris was saying, 'It looks like it's going to happen' but I was like, 'No way.' And actually - 'way'. It did happen." Technology is touched on with first single '4316', an almost robo-folk-pop challenge to the idea of the "transhuman": the idea that technology might sire a new stage in human evolution. Favouring "honest, decent communication" over AI, Campbell takes a dim view of our "friend, unfriend, block, unblock" culture. "I know what I love and it ain't that," she says.TracklistEverything Falls ApartDo Or DieSpider To The FlySecond GuessingBow To Love4316DopamineKeep Calm, Carry OnSaturday's SonTake This PoisonOm Shanti OmYouWhy Worry