I was fortunate to get the opportunity to spend some time in the company of Scottish music icon Fay Fife towards the end of last year and have the pleasure of an in-depth chat about her Countess of Fife project. Our catch up coincided with her reaching the Kickstarter campaign target for her second album, A Woman of Certain Wisdom, in the guise of The Countess of Fife, following the runaway success of her first album Star of the Sea, which had also just seen its second pressing.
You can read the whole interview here
When we spoke, Fay alluded to an EP that would be released ahead of A Woman Of Certain Wisdom later this year, featuring early versions of songs she had recorded for the new album. Betwixt and Between is that EP and to paraphrase Ella Fitzgerald, and stick with the alliteration, the four songs here in no way bother or bewilder, however everything about these four rousing gems bewitches and beguiles.
Bewitching seems appropriate for the first of the four songs, Call Me the Witch, which has already become a live favourite amongst Countess of Fife fans. It feels especially fitting today as I write this on International Women’s Day and think of all the women persecuted and murdered over the years for being a witch, Fay talked about the various pagan references still to be found around Fife and walking in the footsteps of where those women lived and died. As she said when we spoke “I still think whatever way the music is, if it’s coming from an inner place, it connects with people….it’s coming from my gut.” Call Me the Witch clearly reverberates with Fay’s followers as much as Brian’s deeply sonorous guitar riffs match the deep vibrancy of the remarkable vocal.
Fay’s vocal’s feel stronger and more impassioned than ever on these four songs, demonstrated admirably again on the swinging country of Hard Woman to Love replete with softly brushed drums from Willie Mollison and atmospheric acoustic guitar from Kirsten Adamson, the sprightly playing drawing you in as much as the clever lyrical wordplay in the engaging storytelling. The music increases in its ardency once again on Dark Side of the Night, a passionate intensity which is more than matched by the fervency of Fay’s vocal, both of which reach a stirring and hot-blooded conclusion.
Since I’ve been listening to these four songs, each one of them becomes a favourite for a while for a variety of reasons, in recent weeks it is the last of the four songs which has resonated the most and has had a lasting impression on me for personal reasons. One of the things I love about being a music fan is the ability to read your own messages into songs, sometimes those are similar to the intended messages by the writer, but even if what you read into the lyrics is different from that which the writer intended, songs and music have the ability to give you the comfort and boost you need during hard times. Anyway, Live Again (you might also know this as Kiss the Rain) is one of those songs, for me it is a song that makes you realise your own mortality, and that of your loved ones, encouraging you to hug them just that little bit tighter and vow to make the most of the short time you have on this earth. On this heart-rending rollercoaster of a song Fay’s vocal displays a raw emotion that feels so strikingly authentic. When you match this with the instruments played so beautifully, it really pulls on the heart strings. As Fay sings “I wanna kiss the rain, I wanna live again” then builds on this intensity in the last few couplets, levels are raised to breaking point, at its peak it takes all your effort not to dissolve in a flood of tears. Pure raw emotion in bucketloads.
The EP will be released on the 28th of March