#throwing muses

Feat.: Colourbox, This Mortal Coil, The Wolfgang Press, Throwing Muses, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Dif Juz, Clan of Xymox

The project began as a one-off when the pair played a benefit in late 2004. Brokaw had been exploring early music influences, finding unexpected resonances between pre-Renaissance chants and his own minor key guitar improvisations. How about we play a medieval Christmas carol, Brokaw suggested to Donnelly. It was way outside her comfort zone — for one thing, the lyrics were in Latin — but Donnelly immediately jumped in. “In Hoc Anni Circulo,” combining Donnelly’s ghostly, spiritually searching vocals and the tidal surge of Brokaw’s guitar work, was the starting point. Four other pieces, equally archaic and equally freely interpreted, followed.

“Sainte Nicholaes” is a traditional Christmas carol, a feature at costumed revels celebrating the season. Donnelly and Brokaw strip it down to its core, slow splayed chords framing the melody. The cut has a trembling, dark-before-dawn energy, the long night of the solstice birthing hope and light.

“Novus Annus Adiit” is maybe the best of these haunting cuts, Brokaw’s guitar taking musing, shadowy flight, as Donnelly floats keening, almost inhuman tones over him. The piece is a Hungarian carol heralding the new year, a cold, unforgiving time for medieval peasants, but one freighted with longing for better days ahead. But really, not much has changed over a millennium, and the song cuts through the murk and uncertainty of the present towards tentative hope and beauty. Who knew we needed a brace of medieval Christmas carols to get through our current morass? Not me, but Brokaw and Donnelly did somehow.