In Welsh culture, Hiraeth (pronounced hee-raith) describes a feeling of longing for something that’s irretrievably lost.
“Shk-shk-shk” – opener Find Your Way Back is built from a vocal-loop placeholder Georgia Fields had intended to replace with tambourine, until producer Josh Barber convinced her otherwise.
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The synergy between artist and producer is evident throughout, with the pair’s mutual fascination with unconventional percussion – castanets (Persuasion), half-broken vintage wind-up toys and terracotta pots played with felted sticks (Holding My Hands Out), tin pans (How A Girl Becomes A Puddle) – informing Hiraeth’s limitless sonic palette.
The rhythmic bass undercurrent of standout track Persuasion, which features a blissful chorus melody, channels The Motels’ Total Control. Inspired by Mizuko Kuyo – a Japanese Buddhist ceremony to mourn deceased foetuses – Fields opens up about her miscarriage in Water To Water. “I never met you/ But I knew you…” – performed solo on guitar, it’s appropriately devastating.
Fields noticed herself returning to some “not-so-healthy coping strategies” during lockdown, which she unpacks on the simmering, sinister In My Blood (“Nature, nurture, pleasure searcher…”). In Write It On The Sky, her weightless vocal performance makes us feel airborne: “Whisper these words to myself… I am enough.”
We’re all mourning our bygone lives in one way or another right now. And Fields’ latest record beautifully encapsulates the rich complexity of the human experience.
Label: Independent/MGM
Release date: 17 November
