Jenny Gillespie Mason - Rungs of Love (Native Cat) [Folk]

Jenny Gillespie Mason has been exploring purple mist-shrouded musical paths with various collaborators for a while via the Sis and the Lower Wisdom project, and under her solo, more introspective, Ship Says Om moniker, but has decided to come out of the pseudonymous closet, to hark back to her folkier teenage roots, albeit, if this first single is anything to go by, after giving them an acid infusion. She even decamped to L.A., and enlisted a crack team of local musos to realise the album project, which will be released later in the year.

“Rungs of Love” starts pastorally, almost innocently, enough with a good-natured acoustic guitar solo, harking back to simpler - if such a thing ever existed - times. It's not long though before her trademark psychedelic tendencies flutter into sight, this time more micro than mega-dosed, with a curious and cosmic synth infusion that sets the track on a higher path.

Scene set, it's time for Mason's pure and true vocals to float though the speakers, her musings on the nature of love as a portal towards higher consciousness, exactly the right sort of question to be asking in this age of populism, division and autocratic creep. The track then gently winds its consummately crafted course: the fusion of strings - both plucked and bowed, daydreamy electronics, balmy bass tones and holistic rather than driving percussion, melting like gently warmed butter into a faraway, gently freaky folk gem that nods to the sixties, but which has a timeless quality, that will still sound good in '86. Bring on that album.

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Playlist Companion

Find Mason in the Slow Folk Playlist.