Karuna, Heartsease | Track Review 🎵

F

olk group Karuna have left the station, heading up the echelon with their new release, ‘Heartsease‘. The song is a one-of-a-kind release, with an early music foundation layered with a modern folk flavour.

The opener establishes right away that the band are happy to try something new and venture into their own creative realm. The band’s vision pays dividends as well, with the group adapting to popular sound decades, if not centuries before, rather than inventing a prototype. Abi also smashes through her voice recording, leaving little room for dissonance with her high-pitched angelic vowels.

Similarly, the music talks a thousand words with a fiddle, adding to the track’s uniqueness. The fiddle produces a pleasant-sounding instrumental, and it brings a sound to the forefront that is not common in current times. A rhythm guitar also adds to the solid base, and it binds the entire mix together like glue.

Speaking about the new single, Abi said, “The song Heartsease is inspired by two things: a prayer flag and a flower! For a long time, I kept having the melodic phrase that kept coming to me as it is in the song “Heartsease all in a song…” but I didn’t know why. It came as a random phrase- so I let it bubble in my head in my inner song cauldron.”

“Then the pandemic came, and I was inspired by Captain Tom Moore, who fundraised simply by walking round his garden to raise money for the NHS. I wanted to use my talent of songwriting for good effect. One day I was doing some meditation and was looking at a picture of a prayer flag. and a light bulb went off in my head….”

Prayer Flag

“A song is much like a prayer flag in that it sends hope and healing and blessings around the world”. So, I decided to write a song based on what has happened to humanity with the pandemic and what will see us through. I chose the song that could be a fundraiser for people to join in the repeating chorus and then donate some money to MSF, to their covid vaccine relief programmes. They would gain some ” heartsease” by singing and contemplating the qualities of compassion and care that we all have to take forward at this shadowy time. The song has raised £749 for MSF.”

“There is also a flower called Heartsease, and it is symbolically meant to bring healing, so there is this archetypal symbolic meaning too. I grew up in a family of early music musicians, and one of them later told me that there is a song in one of Shakespeare’s plays called Heartsease. I did not consciously know this at the time – maybe I had read it many years ago and sort of knew subliminally. It is rather ironic as you can always hear the flavour of early music in my work as this is what I grew up with.”

You can take a listen to ‘Heartsease’ by Karuna below. Also, be sure to follow the group on their official social media accounts. I am sure there will be plenty more gems like this one on the way very soon; well, let’s hope so anyway because this one is a treat. Either way, 2021 is looking to be a very bright year for Karuna.

So, wait no longer, you can listen to ‘Heartsease‘ by clicking here.

Five out of five – George James.