Song Review: Aoife O’Donovan, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Julie Fowlis - “Hallowell” (Transatlantic Sessions)
The pleasure of seeing and hearing Aoife O’Donovan, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Julie Fowlis singing “Hallowell” to Donald Shaw’s piano accompaniment was worth the 11-year wait.
Recorded in 2013 for BBC ALBA’s “Transatlantic Sessions” and just uploaded to YouTube, it’s a stunning contemplation of death written by Stephen Spitzer that O’Donovan first recorded with Sometymes Why.
She sings the verses and, standing in front of the piano, is joined by Carpenter and Fowlis to deliver the chorus:
The dead lift me up/in brightest sky, the clouds below me race/the dead lift me up/I see them face to face
It could’ve been morbid. But it is instead deeply moving and leaves the listener to wonder how these three have resisted the urge to collaborate in the intervening years.
Grade card: Aoife O’Donovan, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Julie Fowlis - “Hallowell” (Transatlantic Sessions) - A
6/23/24