CLR THEORY

Album: WAVES

Their debut album as CLR theory isn’t the first project Gill Higgins and Hannah Jarrett-Scott have collaborated on, having worked to provide PPE to the NHS during the pandemic. Both key workers while the country was under lockdown, their experiences of this time are woven into WAVES , a record about healing, about finding strength in community: a record about surviving.

From the inviting warmth of a cappella opener ‘I’d love you for less’, to the hand-claps and birdsong that embellish lead single ‘I’m too tired’, the tracks are unmistakably homemade, built around the duo’s crisp vocal harmonies and the sounds of the everyday.

And yet there is a burning sense of hope and humanity in this housebound musical space, in the affectionate voice message playing under the moody sound collage of ‘Brain bath’, and in the warm rush of strings and brass that engulfs ‘Apologies’.

Freedom and restraint rub up against each other across the album. ‘Communication of love’s’ simple jazz-pop melody is regulated by a steady pulse of piano, while a fiddle soars above, weightless and unconfined. Where tracks like ‘Look alive’ wind pristine harmonies tightly round a pastoral folk melody, others are loose, impressionistic.

‘Breathe’ is both the darkest and the most beautiful cut on the record, harmonium softly droning in and out, mimicking a sleeping patient’s slow breathing. Before a pair of recorders lead the song out in bittersweet innocence, JarrettScott and Higgins deliver a simple message for facing death head-on: ‘you’ve far too much living to do’.

WAVES is out now

Zoë White