Shirley Collins releases "Hares On The Mountain" from new album 'Archangel Hill' - due out later this month

Shirley Collins

Releases new song “Hares On The Mountain” – watch video here

New album Archangel Hill out May 26th

Photo credit: Grant Gee

“England’s greatest living folk singer” Uncut Album of the Month 8/10
“Archangel Hill stands testament to a music third act every bit as engaging as anything that went before”Mojo 4*


Ahead of the release of Archangel Hill, Shirley Collins’ third album for Domino (due May 26th), she is please to share a second track from the record, “Hares On The Mountain”.
 
This is the third time Collins has recorded the folk song, she says: “I’ve recorded this twice before: once a rather trivial version collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams; the second time I rewrote the melody and recorded it with Davy Graham in 1965. This time I was looking to bring out the mysterious and wry quality that lies underneath.”
 
Watch the video for “Hares On The Mountain” – directed by Spark Studios – here.
Stream “Hares On The Mountain” here.
 
After decades of stewardship, Shirley Collins allows us to discover once more her timeless classic “Hares On The Mountain”, a song she defined as a young woman but when re-sung on Archangel Hill, re-emerges aching with the wisdom of the archetypes she has at many points in her life embodied; mother, muse, dreamer, explorer, samaritan, elder, rebel and sage... Every one of these shades of Shirley has affected the tending with which we now receive this last harvest and the tenderness we hear within songs, sung like only Shirley can. It only takes a heartbreak to sing a love song but a lifetime to sing a folk song.
 
All of the songs on Archangel Hill were recorded last year except for “Hand And Heart”, which was taken from a live performance at the Sydney Opera House in 1980 and features an arrangement by Shirley’s beloved and talented sister Dolly Collins as well as the words of author F.C. Ball, aka Great Uncle Fred. The record has been produced by Ian Kearey - Shirley Collins’ musical director and the arrangements were shared between Collins, Kearey, Barnes, as well as Dave Arthur and Pete Cooper, players from The Lodestar Band.
 
No one else in this land knows old-song like Shirley Collins, weaving into them on every airing a new genetic code, a new revelation, a new perspective. But Shirley’s spell is not just conjuring up of songs it’s the evocation of the land too. There is a quiet muse in this record, redolent with the chalkiness of the South Downs, the landscape that has knitted itself into the bones of every generation of Collins’. This is an album that swoops like the Downs through the episodes and the musical companionships of Shirley’s road less travelled.
 
Archangel Hill is twilight teaching, an end of time reminder from Shirley about being a good ancestor and paying your respects to the generations before. Shirley has done a lifetime of this work and with this record asks of us to do the same.
 
Watch the video for the previously shared “High And Away” here.
 
Archangel Hill is available to pre-order on Dom-Mart grass green-coloured vinyl with signed postcard, standard vinyl, CD and digitally. Pre-order: Dom Mart | Digital
 
Upcoming live date
21st May – Brighton Festival @ Brighton Dome, Brighton
 
Shirley Collins Online:
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram