The track listing locates it in the problematic subgenre of the holiday album, beloved by some and despised by others: “Three Kings Sing in the Woods”, “Shepherds Search for Sheep at Dusk”, “All Ye Faithful”.
But the music is far stranger than those titles suggest.
Cannell frequently bows her violin to accentuate the instrument’s potential for drone effects, imparting a medieval quality. Yet the irregular looping of her compositions also communicates a distinctly modern edge.
Sometimes, as on the opening number “A Christmas Tree Procession”, it’s easy to discern traces of the carol invoked by the title. More frequently, she lures listeners in with the promise of a traditional melody only to leave them lost in a forest of fragments.
“Tangled Among the Holly and Ivy” is a great example, a song that expertly intertwines form and content. Her violin sounds like it’s struggling to break free of the Christmas carols we have heard so many times that we have stopped hearing them.
Brightly Shone the Moon cuts through the commercially sanctioned cheer that bombards us this time of year to reveal the sombre feelings beneath. There may be a light flickering in the distance, but we must brave the darkness to keep it in sight.
This is a fitting sentiment for an era in which, despite the massive impact of human beings on the natural world, the icy fingers of loneliness penetrate even the most densely populated places.
Communal rituals around the winter solstice have given way to a depressingly atomised existence. Instead of leading to shared experiences of wonder, the impulse to connect all too often inspires nostalgia for a past that can only be perceived through the pain its withdrawal inflicts.
While Brightly Shone the Moon resonates with melancholy, the record also kindles hope for a different, better future.
Although Laura Cannell has not made much of an impression in the mainstream, she has been celebrated in the experimental music scene for performing her music in locations with distinctive atmospheres and acoustics, such as old churches.
This attention to the way music sounds in a specific context reflects a broader interest in locality. The liner notes describe the “marshes of rural Norfolk”, where she spent her childhood. “In the village she grew up in, carols were sung in the Methodist chapel, the church, the village hall, and outside people’s doors.”
That’s a far cry from the multicultural metropolis of London. Yet Cannell’s music never gives the impression of being reactionary.
Brightly Shone the Moon doesn’t conjure an idealised national past, of the sort that far-right politicians like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson invoke. The England it calls to mind feels pre-national, if anything, like the pagan Dorset that pulses in Thomas Hardy’s novels.
This is in keeping with Cannell’s previous work, which has sought, in various ways, to channel the primal.
Cannell has released a series of records whose titles all include the suffix “lore”, such as Firelore and Ghostlore. And earlier this year, she put out LYRELYRELYRE, which explores the possibilities of Plato’s favourite instrument.
At first glance, her surprisingly extensive catalogue appears to be about as far removed from contemporary electronic music as it’s possible to get. Cannell only uses traditional instruments and assiduously avoids rhythmic beats.
But the longer you listen to Brightly Shone the Moon and the records that preceded it, the more you begin to perceive them as spiritual cousins of ambient electronica.
The reticence of Cannell’s compositions, their refusal to provide the satisfactions of pop, places them on a continuum with the deconstructivist mindset that animates musicians who break music into tiny pieces, only to reassemble it as an abstract mosaic.
Brightly Shone the Moon may not provide an antidote to the relentless onslaught of holiday music that saturates public spaces. But it does a tremendous job of reconnecting us with the sublime roots of the season’s rituals.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
