KYLE CAREY
The Last Bough
Gaelic Americana music anyone? Composed and performed by someone born in New Hampshire and currently residing in New York who is a fluent Gaelic speaker?
If that sounds rather too far-fetched, then the chances are that you have yet to come across Kyle Carey, for whom the above is the ultimate potted biography.
To unpick briefly, following a Fullbright Scholarship to Cape Breton to study Scottish Gaelic song and traditional music, in 2010-2011 she gained a certificate in Scottish Gaelic language and music on the Isle of Skye before beginning her musical career by recording her debut album in Dingle, Ireland, a mixture of Appalachian folk and Celtic, which would develop into her trademark aforementioned Gaelic Americana style.
Much water has since passed under the bridge, and ‘The Last Bough’ her fourth full-length album, written over a three-year period which encompassed the pandemic, pregnancy and the first year living with a baby and husband in a hand built, homemade “tiny-home-on-wheels” in the Vermont hills, and realised in the winter of 2024 following a highly successful Kickstarter campaign.
Intensely personal and intimate, the album reflects a uniquely raw, sensitive, touching and profound period in her life, as Kyle leads us on a journey through infertility, the joys and anguish of early motherhood and a contemplation of nature through a fervent connection with the Vermont woods.
Whilst, at times, her writing contains imagery of the finest order, for example the concept underlying the title track began with the image of a family tree in a Bible, and at the time it was not clear whether she would be able to have a child, at other the writing is of a narrative nature, for example on The Sere Wind, a poignant, moving piece written postpartum, written from the perspective of an Irish woman who tragically drowns her newborn after being convinced that it had been swapped with a ‘changeling’.
Lest one should get the idea that the entire album is steeped in darkness, rest assured that there are indeed lighter, sweeter and more uplifting offerings, indeed careful listening to Bà i ù o hò, the first song in Gàidhlig that Kyle learnt to sing all those years ago, will be rewarded by the sound of baby son Asher’s ultrasound heartbeat woven into the song, a unique mother/child duet.
The fusion of musical styles within Kyle’s music is no mere gimmick, this is serious music in which to become immersed.
