Bridget Hayden and The Apparitions’ debut folk album Cold Blows the Rain reads like a film photograph of a forgotten time. Comprised of eight new arrangements of traditional Irish, English, and American folk songs from the 20 th Century, the orchestral group do the opposite of modernizing: with simple, drawn-out melodies, cool and austere vocals, and an overall minimalistic production, Cold Blows the Rain feels like a performance in a dark, damp, medieval tavern—a collection of tales whose themes stretch across multiple centuries.

Time is the central character of this record, and the band seems to take great interest in the way it withers, creates distance, or preserves a fleeting moment. “Lovely on the Water” begins the album with a simple, slow, haunting duet between the cello (played by Hayden) and bandmate Dan Bridgewood-Hill’s viola, before Hayden repeats the melody with her vocals—a structure reminiscent of a medieval troubadour song. As she tells the early 20th Century story of a couple torn apart by war, her pacing of the lyrics, coupled with her mournful yet resonant voice, gives the characters at least a few seconds more in each other’s arms. Likewise, in “Are You Going to Leave Me,” a song about the moment before a man leaves the narrator for another woman, Hayden elongates the ends of phrases, lingers on almost every vowel, and allows herself to fade gradually into the instruments. It’s as if Hayden views her characters with empathy, allowing the real world to pause to prioritize their inner thoughts—allowing the sweet moments of the past to stay present until time sweeps it away from existence.

Perhaps no song on Cold Blows the Wind encapsulates this feeling more than the final track “The Unquiet Grave.” Just over eight minutes long, the record’s finale nearly doubles the length of the previous songs despite following the similar structure of little-to-no choruses and several verses. The traditional Irish folk song the band adapts is a haunted lamentation: a widower stands over the grave of his wife and grieves so passionately and loudly that it revives her just to tell him to move on. Since Hayden is the sole vocalist (apart from a sparsely-placed background accompanist), the dialogue between the protagonist and his wife’s ghost blend together, and their perspectives on yearning and confronting the past become singular. Aside from the rippling banjo that introduces the folk song, the band plays one note for several seconds at a time, as if respectful of the emotional moment between two lovers briefly reuniting before death and time consumes them again. It’s a bittersweet ending to a bittersweet album—one that chooses to hold a little tighter onto loved ones before it’s time to let go.

In Cold Blows The Wind, it’s difficult to believe these songs the band selected were dated around the beginning of the 20th Century and discuss relatively modern concepts like World War I, industrialization, and the settling of the Appalachia. The grief, longing, and love that unify all the tracks feel ancient: whisps of people’s lives that exist in the waves and winds billowing since the medieval era. The arrangements by the band—the close harmonies of the gliding viola and cello,
the plucky banjo, the airy harmonium, and Hayden’s folksy vocals—give the record a beautiful, frigid edge that warps time altogether. Cold Blows The Wind preserves history, time, humanity.

order Cold Blows The Wind by Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions HERE