Loreena McKennitt - The Songbook of Secrets

During a crossing on the Trans-Siberian Railway, Loreena McKennitt wrote The Book Of Secrets, the album that made her a global star with three million copies sold. It's further proof of her refined vocal skills, and a journey through the ethnic music of past and present, from the solemn hymn of "The Mummers' Dance" to the driving ballad "The Highwayman", via "La Serenissima" (a baroque serenade for harp, viola and cello) and the Caucasus ("Night Ride Across The Caucasus"), evoking the legends of "Marco Polo" (violin, tablas, wordless chant) and Dante ("Dante's Prayer", a prayer for choir, violins and piano).

Loreena McKennitt's songs hang suspended in a "timeless time", lost among the memories of a deep and restless past. "I think part of my research has led me to deeply examine some distant century," she explains, "and I imagine they were good times, however hard and uncomfortable they were to live through. I think what attracts me most about past cultures is the scale of those communities, and the makeup of those communities, and the fact that that kind of life worked in a tightly integrated way: you knew who the shopkeepers were, you grew your own produce, and I think it's easy to fall into the trap of a romantic view of all that, but I think deep down it means going back to a kind of life that's more easily understandable and meaningful for everyone. So I find myself fascinated by examining those cultures, but at the same time I believe those were extremely hard times."

Loreena's private life, too, has been marked by very hard moments. Her boyfriend Ronald Rees, his brother Richard Rees, and a friend, Greg Cook, died in a boating accident on Lake Huron. Following the tragedy, the Canadian singer-songwriter stayed away from the scene for nine years and decided to fund the Cook-Rees Fund For Water Search And Safety. She chose to donate the proceeds of her first live album, Live in Paris and Toronto, recorded for Quinlan Road, her longtime label based in Stratford, Ontario, to this fund. The record contains over 100 minutes of music across 17 tracks, remixed in England at Real World Studios, owned by Peter Gabriel.

Between 2000 and 2005, Loreena travels constantly, broadening her horizons towards the gateways of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Between 2005 and 2006 she's back in the studio for a new record, nine years after her previous effort.

An Ancient Muse was released on November 20, 2006, and is once again the product of a collaboration with Real World. The album ranges from mythology in Homer's Greece (the poignant "Penelope's Song") to the history of Ottoman Turkey ("The Gates Of Istanbul", "Caravanserai"), before landing in Crusades-era ancient England ("The English Ladye And The Knight").

Arabic and Middle Eastern influences take over, decisively shaping the sound, which remains elegant throughout, even if at times it teeters on the edge of formula.

In 2007, McKennitt went back on tour after many years' absence from the stage.

A return to the stage sealed three years later by a new album, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, recorded within the ancient walls of the Sharon Temple, north of Toronto. Nine tracks, no new originals: all reworkings of great Celtic classics, reinterpreted with highly traditional instruments, freshened only by scattered electronic touches, all tied together by a shared socio-political backdrop.

A deeply biographical return to her roots, though one that leaves very little to say, coming across as almost inconsequential within McKennitt's career.

The album opens with the song about the Irish famine, "As I Roved Out On A Bright Day Morning", which the eclectic composer splits into two parts. The first is a cheerful country ballad for country guitar, voice, bagpipes, fiddle and percussion. What follows is a meditative passage of lofty vocalizing, synth and guitar. This alternation between dynamic pieces and calmer tracks runs through the whole album, shaping its flow and listenability. Hence the instrumental "Brian Boru's March", which starts off woodland and fairy-tale-like in crystalline harp drops, amid the wind of tin whistles, before swelling into a grand march for bagpipes and fiddle. By contrast, the lament of "Down By The Sally Garden", reinterpreted with genuine faithfulness, glides along languid and celestial. The dances resume with the beguiling round of "Star Of The County Down", only to be abruptly interrupted by a tense, nocturnal tale, as secretive as a clandestine meeting: "The Wind That Shakes The Barley", a ballad celebrating resistance, written by Robert Dwyer Joyce for the Irish rebellion of 1798.

The sweet, patriotic "The Death Of Queen Jane", the briny instrumental "The Emigration Tunes" and the closing, heartfelt and warm "The Parting Glass" sing of what is at once a farewell and a promise to return to the lands of the Celtic harp.

The second comeback is called Lost Souls (2018), her first album of new material in twelve years. Aside from "Spanish Guitars And Night Plazas", which largely rests on the skill of the session players anyway, it's a record built on mannered preciousness (or worse, pomp), leaning too often on piano-driven ballads and the same tried-and-tested anthemic mode ("A Hundred Wishes", "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", the title track), and once again neglecting her harp ("Ages Past, Ages Hence"). Not even the Arabic-tinged instrumentals, predictable by this point too, manage to liven things up enough.

For those who travel the world far and wide, there's no moment quite comparable to finally setting out on the road back home. That longing that wraps around you at the mere thought of seeing loved ones again, of returning to your own habitat, perhaps after months of long and exhausting work, is priceless — and an artist of Loreena McKennitt's calibre, who has lived through these cycles for several decades while reaping excellent professional rewards, knows full well the pull and the yearning to relive those feelings.

The Road Back Home, the title of the Canadian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist's new work released in 2024, seems entirely bound up with all the feelings just described. The album is marked by a strong, deliberate evocation of her native land, which the artist from Morden chose to instil in its songs, where the stylistic return to the traditional form of Celtic music directly tied to the early phases of her artistic path is equally evident.

In Stratford, Ontario, where Loreena has lived since the 1980s, a completely chance meeting took place with a group of local Celtic musicians. Out of that encounter came part of her 2021 Christmas concerts, later released in 2022 under the title Under A Winter's Moon.

The same musicians also accompanied McKennitt this past summer at the aforementioned folk festivals, alongside her longtime collaborator, cellist Caroline Lavelle. Following the pure instinct typical of folk tradition, Canadian singer-songwriter James Keelaghan happened to join one of these shows, lending his voice to the traditional Scottish/Irish standard "Wild Mountain Thyme". The passions sparked by those performances were captured and recorded with the firm aim of preserving the deep empathy generated in those moments, and the powerful sense of unity that those emotions fostered in the hearts of fans and, even more so, of the musicians themselves.

The tracklist includes some entirely new songs ("Searching For Lambs" and the lively "Mary & The Soldier", among many others) dating back to McKennitt's early days on the folk circuit, alongside reworkings — in a decidedly more ethnic vein than the originals — of pieces that have marked her history, such as "On A Bright May Morning" and "As I Roved Out", both taken from 2010's "The Wind That Shakes the Barley", and "Bonny Portmore" (the soundtrack to the film "Highlander III"), dating all the way back to The Visit from 1991.

Room is also made for the inevitable instrumentals, which hold a place of real importance in Celtic musical culture. The crescendo built by "Custom Gap", "Greystones" and the new "Salvation Contradiction" fills the air the way only these deep, infectious harmonies can. As described, these passages are dressed in purely folk garb, venturing into contemporary Celtic territory, alluring and sinuous, polished by the sound of instruments such as harp and accordion, mandolin, acoustic guitar, violins, banjo and various percussion, not forgetting the typical tin whistle — colloquially known as the penny whistle — for a swirl of vibrations that, combined with McKennitt's lofty, unchanged voice, send the listener tumbling back in time, hopelessly anchored to the scents and sounds that only nature can offer.

Contributions by Rossella De Falco ("The Wind That Shakes The Barley"), Michele Saran ("Lost Souls"), Cristiano Orlando ("The Road Back Home")