★★★★
"Titled after Luke Howard, who in 1802 gave clouds their names, this collection of songs delights with the poetry of its lyrics. “There was a time when all that was known/Of our skies was danger and divine.” That literary quality rewards the most on these ephemeral narratives from Kitty MacFarlane that are discoveries and adventures supported, with sublime elegance, by a group of thoughtful instrumentalists. The intriguing Sea Silk, the touching lullaby Dawn and Dark, the rousing Man, Friendship — about the flooded Somerset Downs — or Gerard Manley Hopkins’s 150 years-old Inversnaid serve to remind, without a trace of sentimentality, of the inescapable practicalities of the fragile but utterly symbiotic human bond with nature. The melancholy Appalachian ballad Frozen Charlotte, a castigation of vanity, is an apt reminder"
Michal Boncza
