LIVE: Spell Songs at Cambridge Corn Exchange (4th September 2026)

I’m back! Temporarily.

I’m starting this post on the eve of Super Thursday, the biggest day in the publishing calendar. There is a LOT happening in the bookshop at the moment and only so much time in the day, so much energy in the tank. My free time is currently spent on walks (staring at birds), reading books, doing jigsaw puzzles (mainly buying them) and… right now, watching the new series of Colin From Accounts.

I did however get out to a gig last week, which has definitely filled up my cup.

I’ve spoken here in the past about my love of the work of Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, both individually (both are magicians in their own right) and collaboratively, on three gorgeous books. It has been a real joy to be bookselling around the publication of their latest book The Book of Birds. I have put so many copies of it into the hands of readers, and enjoyed so many lovely discussions around the book, as well as a couple of events with Rob and Jackie along the way. Next week I’ll be cheerleading for it at the Wainwright Prize ceremony where it is shortlisted.

Last Friday I was lucky to be invited to see the magnificent folk collective Spell Songs performing at Cambridge Corn Exchange. They were there to celebrate the release (on that very day) of their new album In Thin Air, which has been made in response to The Book of Birds. TBOB but set it to folk music? I’m there.

Spell Songs are a collective of 7 extraordinarily talented folk musicians (Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux) put together to make music inspired by The Lost Words. Several years, three books and three albums later and I finally saw them performing.

I’ll be honest that I hadn’t listened to much of their music before, and this show was such a stunning introduction.

The evening started with a scratch choir led by Ben See, who I saw conducting the SYRINX choir at the little old Royal Albert Hall with Stornoway back in March. The choir, with just one rehearsal under their belt, performed a few tracks to get things underway for the evening and they really set the tone.

Next up, Rob and Jackie were interviewed by Karine about the book. I love hearing them both talk. They’re such a joyous, powerful, passionate, cheeky (mostly Jackie) creative partnership and hearing them talk about their work and their passion for wildlife (especially birds in this case) is nothing short of inspiring.

A few minutes later the band took to the stage for the first half of the show, performing songs from In Thin Air while Jackie painted live (with a projection showing on stage). Watching Jackie bringing seven bar-tailed godwits to life before our very eyes while listening to this group of incredibly talented musicians was pure alchemy. Mesmerising, emotional, magic.

I’ve since listened to the new album a bunch, and I’ve really been enjoying it. There’s so much variation - with each artist getting a spin on lead vocals, different instruments taking centre stage, etc. The album follows the flow of the book, which is separated into seven sections (Nest, Egg, Beak, Song, Feather, Flight and Migration.)

There was a brief interlude (to stand in a queue for the ladies, obviously) and then it was time for the second half - with the group performing their self-proclaimed ‘hits’ while Jackie continued to bring wildlife to life on the page. A swift, a pair of seals, acorn and oak leaf and the real pièce de résistance, a raven painted with a raven’s feather.

All of this wonderful music was made all the better for experiencing so much of it for the first time sat with Rob himself (perks of the VIP seats) and having a natter about life (and birds, always birds) in between.

I implore you to catch Spell Songs live if you can, and to take a listen to In Thin Air when you get a chance.

To find out more about the project, and to buy yourself an album (they’re gorgeously produced) head to the Spell Songs website.

Book launch: ‘The World To Come’ by Robert Macfarlane, Johnny Flynn & Emily Sutton (3/10/24)

Indulge me while I write about a really exciting event I attended last week, won’t you?

At the moment it seems as if about 50% of my social calendar is taken up by various events involving Johnny Flynn and/or Robert Macfarlane, and last week I had the incredibly good fortune of attending their book launch. Or, more accurately, of blagging my way onto the guestlist… those joint bookshop manager and music blogger perks coming to the fore for me!

Robert Macfarlane, Emily Sutton and Mouse

The duo have just published, via Magic Cat, a gorgeous picture book version of The World To Come, a song from their collaborative album Lost In The Cedar Wood, illustrated magnificently by Emily Sutton. It was a joy to be there to celebrate the publication day with Johnny, Rob and Emily, in a room full of so much love.

I’ve been a fan of Johnny for such a long time, and after his recent Hammersmith Apollo show I found myself reflecting that he might actually be my favourite all round artist. I adore his music, and his writing therein, I’ve enjoyed various TV and film performances of his, scores and radio adaptations, and have been moved to tears (lots of them) by his performances on the theatre stage. I don't think there is another artist whose work I’ve enjoyed so much across so many mediums, and who beyond all of that seems to be a generally good egg.

In a roundabout way, my love of Johnny’s music was the catalyst that started me on the road to caring far more deeply about nature, and particularly about nature writing as a genre. I happened across a copy of Dara McAnulty’s book Diary Of A Young Naturalist, and took a chance on it based almost entirely on the fact that there was a passage of Johnny’s track Bottom Of The Sea Blues in the back of the book. I loved the book and started to head out on walks and to look for birds wherever I could find them. It was through an interview with Dara that I first really found Robert. There are some mycelium-like connections drawing all of these brilliant people together, I’m sure.

I started to explore Rob’s work, notably losing myself in Underland and falling for The Lost Words, and the news of his collaboration with Johnny was incredibly welcome. The Lost In The Cedar Wood album was an immediate favourite, and the album I’ve listened to most across the past four years (thanks last.fm for that statistic). Arriving when it did, the album acted as a shining light through a fairly dark time, and it is a beautiful collection of tracks that continues to mean a lot to me.

Fast forward a couple of years, through meeting both Johnny and Rob at a few different events, a few of which I’ve written about here, through a second collaborative album, and we’re entering exciting new territory - a book! The book lover and bookseller in me was ridiculously excited at the news that first album track The World To Come was to be made into a children’s book, with the lyrics of the song sitting alongside illustrations by Emily Sutton.

On the surface it is a fairly simple project - song becomes book, and takes on a new life, finding itself a new audience. Delve in and you’ll find that the song, and now the story, has a beautiful meaning, and Emily’s art brings it to life so magically. I got sent an early copy by the publisher, and took a first read while listening to the song. I cried, of course I did.

As you can imagine, I was absolutely thrilled to get the opportunity to attend the launch. I dashed across from work, hopping on a train from bookshop to bookshop, braving the many stairs and finding my way to the fifth floor of Waterstones Piccadilly, to a room buzzing with activity and excitement, and a few familiar faces. A couple of minutes after arriving I met Susan Cooper, author of children’s classic The Dark Is Rising, which I read last year after Rob & Johnny worked on a radio dramatisation of the story.

I had hoped there might be music, but was not expecting to be treated to a small set from Johnny and a small band, unplugged and just in front of me - a far cry from the Hammersmith show just last month. I even locked eyes with Emily’s dog Mouse during The Water... evening made all over again. The set ended with a spot of karaoke, with Rob leading us on ‘big lyric sheet’ duty, while the band (now brilliantly joined by Johnny’s son Gabriel on guitar and an assortment of children on percussion) played a superbly wild and joyous rendition of The World To Come. If you’d like a taste, I posted a clip of the song to my instagram page here, which I think captures just some of the electric atmosphere in the room.

A signing followed, and the room continued to buzz with love and excitement for the project.

I’ve already sold a couple of copies of the book in my shop, and can’t wait to continue doing so across the festive period and beyond. If you’re a fan of Johnny, Rob or Emily you’ll find a lot to love here - whether you’ve a child in your life to buy the book for or just want to treat yourself. It is generally lovely to look at, and such a beautiful and tangible representation of this most lovely of creative friendships between Rob and Johnny, and of Johnny’s relationship with his son. A relatable story, an appreciation of nature and the changing seasons, and encouragement for us to hold onto hope of a world to come. I adore it, and I hope you will too.

If you’d like to hear Rob talking about The World To Come, he’ll be at London’s Southbank Centre on Saturday 26th October in a family friendly event. Tickets are available here.

Elsewhere - a couple of BBC Sounds nods for Johnny - an episode of Peel Acres I was listening to on a journey to work recently, and an appearance on The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe where he talks about the book (listen from around 28 minutes.)

While I'm at it - Hayden Thorpe just released Ness, essentially a musical adaptation of Rob's book of the same name. I'd recommend a listen!

Now, I’m off to find a blackbird perched in a silver birch.

The World To Come is available wherever you get your books - get yourself to your local bookshop (it is Bookshop Day this Saturday, after all!) - and is for sale online here.

LIVE: Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane - River Calls tour (May 2024)

I started writing this post a few weeks back, but life got in the way and I’ve just unearthed the half written post, so here goes nothing for take two...! One of my most well received posts of the last couple of years (and one of my favourites to write, too) was a write-up of a Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane show at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the start of 2022. Opening the post, I wrote:

I went to a gig a couple of days ago! Rejoice. Although ‘gig’ perhaps isn’t the right word, and doesn’t do the evening justice. In the candlelit setting of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, a 340-capacity space that is part of the Globe Theatre no less (!) I saw two of my favourite writers, Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane, performing their album Lost In The Cedar Wood. Music there was, but it was so much more than a gig - a journey… a magical, bewildering evening of story and song, traversing across timelines and continents. Genuinely mesmerising. Tickets were difficult to come by and I feel SO incredibly lucky to have been there.

Looking back a couple of years later, it really was a genuinely transcending and magical experience, a celebration of one of my favourite musical pairings, and of one of my favourite albums of recent years, surrounded by some superb writers on nature. The bookseller and nature writing nerd in me is still giddy with excitement when I think of being in the same room as all of those writers, even (and perhaps especially) having met a few of them at subsequent events (Amy-Jane Beer at Gathering Festival, Sam Lee at the Stornoway album launch, Merlin Sheldrake at a Cosmo Sheldrake show, and of course Rob himself!)

You’d think that it might be difficult to replicate the magic of that evening - the venue, the fact that it was one of the first shows most of us had been to out of lockdown (squished up against strangers), the combination of gig and theatre. It was truly special. Luckily for me (and for all the others who managed to secure some very sought after tickets) the pair have just been on tour across the UK with a full band. 

In venues across the UK (I saw them at Cambridge Junction) audiences were taken on a musical, lyrical journey through songs from the two recent albums, Lost In The Cedar Wood and The Moon Also Rises. Storytelling weaving through the music - as each song finishes, Rob, on stage for the duration of the show, dives into some spoken word. Poetry? Not easy to define, but utterly enchanting. The setlist was clearly very carefully thought out - taking us on a journey through storytelling and song - an extension of what they set out to do in those first shows. With a band too - who are utterly wonderful also.

I saw Johnny with a full band in 2017 at the show which became the Live at the Roundhouse album and I think I’m right in saying that until now, he hasn’t been on a full band tour since then. I’m sure I’m far from alone in being grateful that they found the time to put these shows on, they’ve been a long time coming and they were more than worth the wait! Mainly taking songs from the recent two albums, the show was a true celebration of Johnny and Rob’s collaboration (Bonedigger live is just the absolute BEST, for a start) but they managed to find room for a couple of older favourites (The Ghost of O’Donahue and The Water - both stunning.)

Johnny Flynn · Bonedigger

I won’t be missing the old favourites for too long, as I’ve just secured a ticket for Johnny’s show with the band in London in September, as part of Transgressive Records’ 20th anniversary celebrations. Can’t wait!

I’ve written a lot already about how much I love both Johnny and Rob’s work individually, and this project is such a treat. Whether they continue to write music together or not (my fingers are crossed) I’m glad that they got a chance to take it on the road. To see others responding to the shows so positively and enjoying them so much was the best. In a way there’s an element of bravery in putting on a tour that is quite unlike other things that are out there in format, but it worked so well, and I’ve seen nothing but love for the shows.

With the London show on the horizon, and plenty of Johnny’s acting endeavours to catch up on (I am desperate to watch Ripley!) my interest (as a bookseller and book lover) turns to the books, too. Rob’s work in progress at the moment is Is A River Alive? - I’ll be pestering the publisher for a proof of that as soon as I get a sniff of those existing. (Sorry HH.) Elsewhere, Rob and Johnny are collaborating on a couple of book projects - a graphic novel of the Epic of Gilgamesh (focus of Lost in the Cedar Wood) with artist Dave McKean (very exciting!) and a picture book surrounding the track The World To Come, illustrated by Emily Sutton, due later this year. Truly a marvellous time to be a fan of these two! They’re very busy guys, and I am very happy to be enjoying the fruits of their work.

Now, off to carry on reading Mountains of the Mind with a Johnny Flynn shaped soundtrack. What could be better?

ALBUM NEWS: Johnny Flynn & Robert Macfarlane - 'The Moon Also Rises'

For a bunch of reasons, I've been pretty bad at blogging lately. My head is in a bit of a weird place at the moment and being back to full time at work is exhausting - it's hard to find the time around everything, to be honest. I think that I've also perhaps felt a little distant from music/the blog in general lately... I haven't been to many gigs since lockdown, and writing about artists I'd seen live when I was living in Oxford was how the blog really started to take off in the first place. 

Recently, however, I've had a whirlwind couple of weeks of gigs in London: first up, three Stornoway album release shows for their record Dig The Mountain! which came out last week, and just hit #7 in the album sales chart. Incredible! They played beautiful sets at Banquet Records and Rough Trade East and the launch event at WWT London Wetland Centre was such a special afternoon. Next, my forever favourites The Hoosiers playing one of the best shows I've seen them play at London's KOKO (enough said). And earlier this week, Christof van der Ven headlining in London for the first time in a few years and me getting to rub shoulders with blog favourites Bear's Den and The Staves. I'm eyeing up some more gigs soon... music is pretty great, huh? 

I'm feeling a teeny bit inspired by it all, so I'm making a tentative return to trying to ramble about music - and where better to start than the return of one of my absolute favourite musical pairings, Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane. Separately, they're one of my favourite musicians and one of my favourite writers, and together they make art that I adore. Lost In The Cedar Wood is a favourite album and the accompanying performance was stunning, and I loved getting the chance to chat to Rob about it earlier this year at Cambridge Folk Festival, where he told me exactly what I wanted to hear, that they'd been working on more music, and it was imminent...

A few weeks ago, the pair officially announced that they'd made a new record. Hallelujah! The Moon Also Rises is releasing via the beautiful label Transgressive on 10th November, and it features the first single Uncanny Valley: 

In his announcement of the record, Rob wrote: 

It’s about darkness and light, winter & spring, burial and revelation, stories, weather and seasons, ghosts and paths and love and rivers, and other bits and bobs and pots and pans.

We sort of just kept on writing songs after finishing Lost In The Cedar Wood; some of them we found by walking tracks & rainy woods & streams together, & some by noodling in notebooks, & some in poems & stories, & almost all by laughing a lot.

Working & making with Johnny is just one of the great joys of my life. He’s a quiet, gentle, generous genius with a huge gift for making collaborative, creative connections between people. He’s also very funny. 

Charlie Andrew is on producing duties, and the album features much of Johnny's Sussex Wit band as well as the Sheldrakes, Cosmo and Merlin. You basically couldn't imagine a lovelier and more wholesome bunch of creatives to make music together, and the results are unsurprisingly gorgeous. Second single No Matter The Weight is out now. Almost frustratingly brilliant. 

Pre-order/pre-save the new record here.

Follow Johnny Flynn - Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Follow Robert Macfarlane - Twitter | Instagram.

An evening Lost in the Cedar Wood with Johnny Flynn & Robert Macfarlane

I went to a gig a couple of days ago! Rejoice. Although ‘gig’ perhaps isn’t the right word, and doesn’t do the evening justice. In the candlelit setting of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, a 340-capacity space that is part of the Globe Theatre no less (!) I saw two of my favourite writers, Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane, performing their album Lost In The Cedar Wood. Music there was, but it was so much more than a gig - a journey… a magical, bewildering evening of story and song, traversing across timelines and continents. Genuinely mesmerising. Tickets were difficult to come by and I feel SO incredibly lucky to have been there.

Music, stories, nature - this show couldn’t have been any more my cup of tea.

Having seen Johnny once before at the Roundhouse (the performance of Live at the Roundhouse album fame) I was very excited to get tickets to see him and Cosmo Sheldrake playing as part of a series of socially distanced folk gigs in Hackney towards the end of 2020. Sadly it wasn’t to be and the shows were put on hold and were eventually refunded a few months ago - the announcement of this pair of shows at the Globe came at around the same time. The world might not make it easy for me to see Johnny perform live, but it had offered up some kind of gig exchange.

While I’ve been in love with Johnny’s music for nearly a decade now (after buying the Country Mile vinyl at my local HMV on a whim) my love of Rob’s work is a more recent thing. Since starting work as a bookseller in 2019 I’ve gradually been made aware of Rob’s writing - for me, The Lost Spells was my introduction. The pocket-size (ish) follow-up to Rob and Jackie Morris’ The Lost Words (look it up), I couldn’t resist it upon its arrival into the shop, and have since been gradually acquiring most of Rob’s books. I’m currently reading Underland - slowly, savouring each page. Rob is genuinely a magician with words, and when I found that he and Johnny were collaborating on some music, my heart skipped a beat. The album was one of my favourite releases of last year… here’s what I wrote about it in my AOTY post:

In the past couple of years, my interest in and love for the natural world has increased dramatically, with furlough offering up more time to get into the garden and to go on walks locally. As my curiosity has grown, I've been seeking out writing on nature, and was unbelievably excited earlier this year to find that one of our best natural history writers, the great Robert Macfarlane, was releasing an album with one of my favourite folk artists, Johnny Flynn. A masterpiece waiting to happen, surely.

As I expected, the pair did not disappoint - Lost in the Cedar Wood is something to treasure and an album I will love for years to come. It arrived at exactly the time I needed it and perhaps could most appreciate it. My favourite line, from Enkidu Walked, describing my experience of the past two years - "the birds have my heart and they won't give it back to me." When two brilliant writers come together to make art it was never really in doubt that it would be something truly special...

Johnny Flynn · Enkidu Walked

Fast forward to Monday… negative covid tests, masks on - ready for the first train journey of the year. A novelty at the moment, that’s for sure. Wanting to make the most of the day out, we first visited the eight miles of bookshelves that make up Waterstones Piccadilly, before my first trip to the Natural History Museum in years. The foundations of a dreamy day, by all accounts. Food consumed (Wahaca - yum) it was almost time for the show, so we wandered along the south bank towards the Globe, passing the National Theatre and Tate Modern, and admiring that night-time London skyline for the first time in a *long* time.

There was time for a spot of birdwatching along the way, as a pair of Mute Swans bobbed around in the Thames, with Greylag Geese resting nearby, one eye open to observe passersby. The entire day had this vibe - spotting Great Tits flitting between trees outside the NHM, a Moorhen rooting around in the grass, and a pair of Cormorants flying over… Robins trying to out-sing one another near the Royal Albert Hall… Goldfinches in a tree just off of The Strand… the train journey too offered up Buzzards, Red Kites, Herons and an Egret. I’m incredibly grateful and excited by this new found love of just observing, of watching. There’s a lot to see when you take the time to look.

After an introduction by Robert and Johnny to the ‘world premiere (part 2)’ of the record, we settled in for an evening of stories and music, all surrounding the Epic of Gilgamesh, the inspiration for the record. It was unlike anything I have experienced before - Rob’s narration transporting us into these far distant settings - that of the Epic itself, and of George Smith, who translated it in the 1800s. Johnny portrayed Gilgamesh and George, intercepting Rob’s narration with lines, often witty. The script contained echoes of the music, and of Rob’s work more generally, I think - and suddenly, Johnny would fill the intimate venue with his song, no microphone needed - the audience were silent, and his voice carries with it a certain power. Some of that power is in knowing when to use it, with moments of tenderness interspersed throughout - if they wanted me to leave having felt a spectrum of emotions, they succeeded.

The songs (including two new ones…!) were utterly transfixing. It was incredibly special to experience tracks from an album that I love so much performed in such an all round beautiful setting. A highlight for me, though, was seeing firsthand the love that both Rob and Johnny have for one another’s art. Johnny clearly found Rob’s words as magical as the rest of us, and Rob’s love of Johnny’s music is no secret… at one point he broke the fourth wall (forgiven) to declare just how much he was enjoying sitting beside Johnny while he performed.

Theirs is one of my favourite working friendships, where both genuinely admire the other’s work, and they make up part of a beautiful ecosystem of musicians and writers with an interest in the environment that I very much wish to be part of. I guess, for the evening, I was…

Loitering in the foyer after the show, checking train times, adjusting coats and scarves… and full of the requisite emotions. I’d had a little cry and was full of adrenaline from the final song (with the audience erupting into a cacophony of clapping for the outro of The World To Come, reflecting the album recording which ends with pans clattering). All of a sudden I look up and… Cosmo Sheldrake! Ah! You all know how much I love Cosmo (and was gutted to not get to see him at the initial show with Johnny) and there he was… and just past him, Sam Lee! Folk musician and general hero of the scene, but also the author of the brilliant book The Nightingale.

Johnny Flynn · The World to Come

We had a train to catch, and I didn’t want to interrupt friends reuniting… but just knowing that I’d seen them was a treat. Since the show, I’ve found this thread of tweets by Dr Amy-Jane Beer (author of, most recently, A Tree A Day) who was at the show with Sam as well as Nick Hayes (author of The Book of Trespass). A little bowled over to find in the replies that Merlin Sheldrake was there too - I’m traipsing slightly away from the ‘cool music’ and into the ‘things’ (about time) but my last year or so of bookselling have found me recommending Merlin’s book Entangled Life to just about anybody who will listen. While I didn’t talk to any of these incredible writers, I’m finding something really special in the fact that I got to share the experience with them, spending a couple of hours in that special venue on that lyrical journey…

There’s a chance this show could be taken on tour and I can only implore you to keep an eye out and get a ticket if you’re able to. Pure magic.