Leaning into the Spaces: Burd Ellen Interview

Burd Ellen’s Debbie Armour talks to Gareth Thompson about sacred dramas, Mary as an Ever Mother and taxidermy wrens

Burd Ellen is a Glasgow-based project featuring vocalist Debbie Armour and musician/singer Gayle Brogan. Their new album, Says the Never Beyond, offers a dramatic take on various carols and wintersongs, adding a prickly tension to festive hymns or wassails. Often the sung voices have a chilling detachment, whilst elsewhere the tone is jovial or motherly. The album includes familiar pieces such as “Corpus Christi Carol” and “Cutty Wren”, alongside the Welsh song “Hela’r Dryw Bach” and a Scottish Islands tune, “Taladh Chriosda”. With its blend of analog electronica and sacred resonance, Says the Never Beyond echoes the works of Laura Cannell, Alison Cotton and Amble Skuse. Lockdown restrictions saw the music recorded remotely across Scotland in 2020.

How much of the album’s vocal work was done in one take? 

Most of it, but through exasperation with myself more than anything else. I don’t like overworking things, especially when it’s just me in the room. It’s very easy to disappear up your own self-loathing.  Jim McEwan, the engineer who marshalled these various recordings, had to force me into the studio. I was blown off-course, not being able to make the record in the way I’d envisaged. I felt incapable of creating the space in my house and in my body to let the work come out. There were some dire attempts before we decided to take a day at Solas Studio in Glasgow, just me and Jim.  I sang everything to a digital drone, then shipped the bits out to everyone to see what came back. It was a bizarre way of working and full credit to Jim for making everything sound so cohesive. 

There are some familiar tunes in the collection. Were you aiming for distinctly new versions?  

If you work with traditional songs, you’re always striving to make them your own. Sometimes that means doing something radical, but not always. Emotional connection is what makes a difference. This record was really collaborative but no one heard what the others were doing. So when each interpretation arrived to Jim and I, they became new versions of themselves over and over again. It was incredible seeing it become a unified whole. Everyone worked incredibly hard under trying circumstances. I feel so grateful for their support when I was failing to get my shit together. 

“Taladh Chriosda” is sung at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve in the Outer Hebrides. Was it familiar to you growing up on Mull? 

No, it wasn’t. Mull is in the Inner Hebrides and is culturally distinct from other islands, as they are in turn from each other. Mull is also no longer an inherently Gaelic speaking community. That’s slowly starting to change but the idea of going to Catholic Mass, fully in Gaelic, at any time of year would be quite unusual there. Luke Sutherland (of Rev Magnetic) worked on “Taladh Chriosda”. The process was the same as with the other tracks and musicians, except he was the only contributor to this one. I loved the work he did on our “Chi Mi Bhuam” remix and I’ve been a fan of his work in literature, theatre and music for nearly twenty years. 

You once told me that content, rather than delivery, drives a song’s darker aesthetic. Did that influence your version of “Coventry Carol”? 

There aren’t many versions of “Coventry Carol” in terms of text or melody, so this is the standard one rather than mine. We’re hearing it very much out of context as a stand-alone piece. It belongs to the sacred drama of York’s Mystery Plays, and narrates the murder of first-born children by King Herod after Jesus’s birth.  I feel it really doesn’t matter what you do with the presentation. It’s fundamentally a dark song and explicit about the events it documents. Our version features not only me and my responses, but also Gayle’s and (musician) Jer Reid’s. Jer and I were cautious about the structure – not sonically hamming up the drama that’s inherently there. He did a wonderful job of leaning into the spaces that present themselves in the story’s arc, without overwhelming them.  

“Corpus Christi Carol” has been interpreted as a Holy Grail story, an elegy for Christ and a lament for Anne Boleyn. Do you have a theory? 

I’ve been drawn to this song since I was a teenager. In the context of this project, I think it’s a song about the suffering of Mary as a mother, held forever in the loss of her child. A lot of its opacity relates to our shift into a more secular society. Something in this song also speaks to a sensual and deeply personal relationship to Jesus, or God, or the Fisher King. Whoever you think it is. There’s a voyeurism there too. Are we looking at a grieving mother or lover? Which of the two Marys? And don’t get me started on the wound… I’m drawn to the idea of an accessible, fallible, physical and embodied God with whom one has a relationship that requires work and dialogue. I find a resonance from those quite medieval ideas in Southern Baptist hymns from the States. God seems very tangible and intimate in the lives of those writers. I don’t know if it’s less common for people to feel that way about God in contemporary society. But I sense it’s significantly less acceptable to talk about it in such terms. 

Could the ‘Never Beyond’ character in “Hela’r Dryw Bach” be an obscure reference to God? 

Isn’t everything an obscure reference to God? Seriously though, I think it’s something else. Something less sayable than God. Or certainly our current expression of God. The ritual of the Wren Hunt is very likely a pre-Christian one, so I think it’s a mistake to impose that world view on the song’s content. Never Beyond is perhaps better understood by looking at its counterpart, John the Red Nose from “Cutty Wren”. They are leaders, drivers, the forces that move and shape the process. It’s possible this is a reverse translation of a misheard and Anglicised version of something in Welsh. My Welsh isn’t good enough to postulate on that, but I’m open to hearing from anyone with a theory. 

Did any of the songs hold a special resonance after recent world events? 

Recent events have left me porous and vulnerable, quite honestly, so everything gains special resonance. The fact we managed to create anything at all moves me to tears. As with any work I make, the themes and intentions become clearer  in the process. In this case, I was pleased to find a focus on Mary as an Every Mother emerging. I’ve so loved spending this unfettered time with my children. My eldest son came home for the longest period in many years and it has been wonderful for our relationship. My two smallest are growing up fast, so it was a gift to indulge in the kind of time you have when they’re very young. Mary’s constant and loving presence through this record is the kind I aspire to in the lives of my kids, as they grow up and out of this house. 

These olden carols blended both Celtic and Christian imagery. Does today’s Christian experience miss this Celtic element? 

Well there’s two things to contend with. Firstly, I know what ideas and ethics find their way to me from organised Christianity, but wouldn’t like to guess what’s missing from the personal experience of worship. The second thing is, I’d also struggle to articulate the concept of Celtic. To me, that means a thousand years of civilisation, across four countries, all with different languages, separated by land and sea. The commonalities that we see now are much clearer in retrospect than I imagine they were at the time. I’m always mindful not to slip in to a 1970s idea of Celtic mysticism, much of which is fabrication. 

It might be more useful to discuss the pre-Christian elements present in these ostensibly Christian songs, and the ways those ideas persist. I enjoy the presence of syncretic ideas and images in our seasonal celebrations; the tree in the house, the wreath of protection on the door, kissing under the mistletoe. These are persistent traditions that reconnect us to the land at this turning of the year. There are still Wren Boys in County Wexford performing the ritual and raising money to benefit their local community, although I believe they use a taxidermy wren. I want one!

Burd Ellen Bandcamp