Grief. It’s a subject that’s often taboo in our society, or talked about in hushed tones. Maybe we are scared to remind ourselves that we will all lose people close to us in our lives. When they’re gone all that’s left is how they touched us, the memories and their spirit.
Rona Mac‘s fantastic second album Honeymilk & Heavy Weather deals with grief in vivid, intimate and moving detail, documenting a ” journey through grief, love and life’s grittiest peripheries.” as she puts it. It’s an album about and written for her dear friend Emily Victoria Hemingway, who tragically took her life a few years ago.
An album of exquisitely rendered songs ripe with poetic sensitivity and a startling vocal ability, that if there was any justice in the world would find Rona Mac on all the end-of-year lists, well it is on mine. It’s threaded through with moving fragments of her friend’s life and their friendship, “scattered recordings of voice notes and spoken word pieces that she sent me over the years, varying from her sing-song happy voice, to the deep chested voice of a woman carrying a world of pain, “ says Rona. It captures Emily’s essence, and is woven into part the fabric of this record.
Crafting and producing wonderful homespun songs in her caravan in West Wales, Mac is such an astounding talent, a voice that can pull out deep emotions and cut you to the quick, songwriting that uses its sparsity as a weapon to peel back the layers of feelings of confusion. Haunting opener ‘Seafoam Room’ paddles through an intoxicating 9 minutes of lucidly washes of instrumentation and evocative atmospheres, that lap in and out like the tide, as Mac meditatively urges herself to come up for air, to feel again. ‘Afon Cleddau’ turns a folky stomp inside out on rustling percussion and nimble riffing, evoking imagery of the watery coast and the tides pulling her friend away from her.
‘Body‘ meanwhile, is ripe with almost jazzy pianos and smoky vocals, envelop as a clicking beat as Mac hypnotically observes the moments as the body wakes in intimate detail, what it craves comfort, grounding and touch. Tender and exquisitely drawn. ‘Brothers in Arms’, steps through nimble finger-picking and nostalgic atmospheres to remember young friendships, forged and lost, and illuminated with fondness and the duality of memory and growing up. (“all these sisters are covered in blood”).
Taking inspiration from Ben Howard‘s use of reverb echoing guitar techniques, the beguiling ‘Links Like Fists’ is haunting, wistful and ripe with vivid imagery. Loss, contemplation and melancholia, are riven through each bar as this wonderful track offers a beat that allows Mac to unfurl another wonderful song that builds from intimate to cathartic.
‘Sense‘ is exquisite too, plucked guitar motifs are decorated with poignant couplets that embody emotion of touch and taste and smell of her lost friend, “you let it slip, when you chose a world without you in it” she offers heartbreakingly, investing each note with the painful finality of loss. And places you in the mind’s eye of what it’s like to feel every moment of this trauma, ungrounded and untethered, lost.
‘showmehowyoumourn’ is haunting and resonant, Mac’s multi tracked vocals glows with heart, reminiscent of elements of early Bon Iver by way of the emotive power of Marika Hackman.
Mac brings it to life vividly with a voice of radiant sensitivity and burning heart, that spirals with such a precious a hymnal revelry, through a poetic spoken word part that just adds to the connection, that you can feel it, you can touch it, you can taste it. Cinematic, and emotionally charged it’s a journey through trauma and into the light and it sounds fantastic.
‘And Then They Found Her’ is fanastic. Trust me, stop whatever you are doing down for a moment and drink in this touching tribute. With a vocal that glows with empathy and an exquisite haunting tone, with Mac’s tumbling couplets vividly drawing a tragic picture of a life that ended far too soon. The delicate guitar cycle and shuffling drums that undulates beneath and these crumpled up, emotive words
Meditating upon and swimming through the trauma of loss, the guilt of not speaking up and the sadness of her passing, and punctuated with a promise to herself to “let her go”. Rona says Emily was “let her down after a life of mental health torment, and disrespected her death, and with all the silent mouths not knowing how to talk about it, including my own.”
It’s heart-breaking yet exquisitely daubed with a melody that is bittersweet and raw yet universal offering a hand of hope for those struggling now. With echoes of Eliot Smith. It’s a marvellous composition from a songwriter who continues to scale new peaks.
Closing track ‘Butterfly’ sways with the wisdom redolent of Joni Mitchell or more recently Adrianne Lenker, love, life and grief are explored as Mac dances delicately across each acoustic note, poetically exploring the tenuousness of love (“And I know you tried your best, you gave the lot /But somehow life just don’t quite make the cut deep enough”), before unfurling into enveloping notes that wrap around you like a hug. A fittingly self-aware closer.
A touching tribute not just to her friend but a portrait of an artist whose talent burns brightly and is maturing wonderfully, she has the ability to capture emotions in a bottle and translate them into fantastic recordings from her home. Rona Mac is an formidable songwriter, these songs that are brimming empathy and compassion for her friend, and using songwriting to try and process her trauma, and we are all lucky to be invited in to experience it too, far from gloomy this record both recognises the injustice and tragedy of Emily’s life but also celebrates her. Rona is a human being who is like all of us, is dealing the heaviness of loss in her own way.
