Hilary Woods – “Orange Tree”

Next month, the Irish musician Hilary Woods will release Birthmarks, her follow-up to her 2018 debut album Cork. Woods recorded the new LP in while pregnant, traveling in between her Galway home base and Oslo, home her producer, the Norwegian noise artist Lasse Marhaug. It looks like this album is going to be heavy. First single “Tongues Of Wild Boar” was a gorgeously gothed-out death march. Today, Woods has shared a second song from the album, one that differs pretty starkly from that first one.

The new single “Orange Tree” is a sort spectral folk lullaby. Woods sings in a sort st incantation, and the song works as a gothic reverie. First lyric: “I’m afraid what’s growing inside me.” A line would hit hard from anyone. Sung by an eerily calm and very pregnant woman, it touches something dark and primal.

In a press release, Woods describes “Orange Tree” as “a personal song acknowledging an inner fear the unknown. It’s an exercise in overcoming, becoming more planted and rooted in the earth and in the body.” Woods has also put together a video, a sort flickering experimental film full trees and larvae. Check it out below.

Birthmarks is out 3/13 on Sacred Bones.