Johanna Warren’s new album The Night of the Wind is described as a collaboration with her three-year-old self and a way of reconnecting with a child’s uninhibited sense of play and creativity. The title comes from a book that was written and illustrated by the three-year-old Warren and transcribed by her mother. With each song lyrics are lifted verbatim from the book, for example “she is sitting by the garden eating nectar and gathering honeysuckles” is used in the song ‘Hummingbird’ and Warren’s voice flits from note to note as expertly as the hummingbird controls its flight.
Children have an insatiable curiosity for the world with an untrammelled innocence that was fully indulged, encouraged and supported by her mother. You can hear this on ‘Rainbow Snakes’ which includes a recording made on April 12, 1992 of the young Johanna singing followed by her mother reading the poem out prior to “teethies” being brushed before bedtime.
It is utterly delightful to take the wonder of a child’s imagination and filter it through an adult’s perspective, but Warren never gets in the way of the source material. Playing instruments associated with childhood like the Pixiphone and a drone flute (it has with two chambers, one for notes the other plays a drone) is inspiring and then having Ellis Green weave in synthesiser bridges the gap between the child and adult brilliantly.
Warren’s voice is soothing and mellifluous as full of charm as it brings the stories to life and she says, “In some ways this feels like the most terrifyingly vulnerable thing I’ve ever made. The music isn’t about dazzling anyone with sophisticated language or technical acrobatics. It’s about reclaiming something pure and profoundly silly.”
The Night Of The Wind is as perfect as a rockpool, and Johanna Warren has retained the innocence of the book and recordings that inspired it without overcomplicating anything. We can all still dream of the long summers of our childhood, a time without bills to pay when imagination is unbound, where a butterfly is as captivating as a worm, and when a hurt knee only needs the kiss of a parent to make it better. Johanna Warren has created such beauty out of the purest of elements and made the sonic equivalent of a daisy chain.
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Review by Paul F Cook
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