Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There is always the mist, the melancholy and the memory of the haze, a heady vapour that gets into the blood and adds a nostalgic glow to the day’s events; the sun may shine brightly upon the proceedings, the snow may add a special kind of magic, but it to the Smirr, to the mist that adds perspective in the clouded folds of life, for we are not meant to see everything, life is not a clear avenue for us, or else we would never explore beyond the vapour lies.

For the magnificent duo of Sarah-Janes Summers & Juhani Silvola, the mist is perhaps an illusion of Time drawing back the veil of intrigue and foundation, and in which is to be felt as a gorgeous offering to their third album collaboration together in the inspiring and hauntingly beautiful, The Smoky Smirr O’ Rain.

To combine the traditional and the contemporary is not an easy task, the sheer hard work to capture the elemental processes in both aspects is far from stress free, but like mist, it can be tranquil, soothing, the fine rain adding a sense of coolness to the surrounding, and when your skin or soul is parched, that mist, that rain, feels as though it is worth more than gold, it leads to an affluent state of mind.

The Smoky Smirr O’ Rain is more than just songs or playful jazz-infused traditional tracks, they are dreamscapes, images transplanted from the mind and into the corporeal release that music provides, and in such images made real, Number 81, The Herring Reel, Borrowed Days, Polskat (Rinda-Nickola) Kummitadin Valssi and the album title track of The Smoky Smirr O’ Rain, the jazz influenced improvisation comes into its own, the emotional stir provided by the strings in their pursuit of combining a Scottish romanticism to the Norwegian heritage and pragmatism, is overwhelming, physical, and profound.

The Smoky Smirr O’ Rain is a rare album that understands the union that can be created between great and unashamed joy, the embrace of extroverted melancholy, and the search for a new way to portray and show the human condition at its most sincere, its most intense, its most demonstratable. Utterly charming and beguiling, the mist reveals a harmony unblemished.

Ian D. Hall