Sairie’s debut album shifts the band’s sound into a cooler, more shadowed register, turning psych-folk brightness toward an autumnal chill. Beneath the Spreading Tree settles the group’s previous single-era promise into a coherent statement that mixes folky antiquity with modern pop clarity.
Based in Brighton, the trio and collaborators bring years of compact releases to this record, after a run of singles and EPs since 2019. The opener, a Pentangle-leaning Song for the Winter, unfolds with birdsong, luminous hills and insistent surf, establishing a palette that is vivid at first and then reveals a harder undertow. That tension, beauty edged by peril, is the album’s organising feeling.
Emma Morton’s vocals supply an indie-choir brightness that frequently recalls 1980s alt-pop, yet the arrangements keep the music rooted in older traditions. On Harder Than It Seemed, Andy Thomas’s substantial bass underpins Morton’s tone, and the record occasionally hints at folk precedents such as Maddy Pryor. Jon Griffin’s harmonium contributes a waspish drone on The Breeze on the Meadow, where violin from Maria Marzaioli and Alice Eldridge’s cello nudge the songs toward unsettling territory.
The musicianship is consistently assured, and the arrangements deliberately reference 1970s curios without lapsing into pastiche. Traditional material receives dense, contemporary treatments: The Gairdner and the title track are reshaped into something both respectful of their roots and newly strange, the latter echoing the execution motif of the Scottish ballad Gilderoy. Griffin’s Three Knots begins like a sugared duet before descending into darker textures, while The Green Light captures youthful infatuation and then shifts tone with a subtle, devastating turn.
Across the record, Sairie fold ancient balladry into new compositions so the songs sound as if they have long lives behind them. The result is a debut that announces the band as a careful custodian of tradition and a nimble moderniser, one that invites listeners to follow their movement away from summer’s glare and into a much quieter, more uncertain season.
