The Wilderness Yet

Taking their name from a line in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ nature poem ‘Inversnaid’, this Sheffield-based trio boast the vocals of former BBC Young Folk Award finalist Rosie Hodgson, the vocals and fiddle playing of Rowan Piggott, and the vocals, guitar and flute playing of Philippe Barnes on a resonant debut that’s both an uplifting celebration of the natural world and a timely warning about humankind’s devastating impact on the environment.

While a capella opener ‘The Beauties of Autumn’, inspired by Hodgson’s early morning countryside walks, celebrates the abundance of life as the year starts to turn. They subsequently lament the way Britain is being heedlessly stripped of its woodlands on ‘In a Fair Country’. Eric Bogle’s anti-whaling song is paired with an old Irish air on ‘Song of the Whale’, while Piggott’s ‘Queen & Country’ revisits a tune from his Songhive project about the plight of the native bee population. Nature may provide an over-arching theme but Piggott’s ‘Hjältedyrkan’ (Hero Worship) is a polska written as a birthday present for the musician who inspired his love of Swedish music, while Barnes’ ‘Pete’s Jig’ and ‘Joan Brodie’s’ are dedicated to a Sussex fiddler and his Scottish, accordion-playing granny respectively.