Miriam Ingram - Mariana Trench

Miriam Ingram - Mariana Trench

Words: Desmond Traynor

Miriam Ingram’s previous album release was 2006’s Trampoline. Since then there have been various singles, an EP (2020’s Spells) and music for film, theatre and TV, but no full-length follow-up. Life got in the way. So, was it worth the wait? A resounding Yes. 

Material from singular-sounding female vocalists usually elicit references to Kate Bush and Bjork, but the multilayered vocal arrangements here, exercises in timbre and texture, mean such comparisons are not out of place. The listening experience ranges from dreamy to scary, sometimes within the same song, e.g. from the gentle ‘Snowflake’ to the rockier ‘Cling’. One standout is ‘Gazetteer’, which reflects the hinted depths of the album’s title. 

The whole opus sent me back to reacquainting myself with the highlights of the psych folk of Pentangle, ‘The Battle of Evermore’ (the only Led Zeppelin track to feature a guest singer in Sandy Denny), and Denny herself (it was not for nothing that Ingram covered Denny’s ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes?’ on Trampoline). I also thought of the ethereal work of closer-to-home lass Katie Kim, both solo and as a member of the magnificent Øxn. 

It is a great pity that some of these songs, recorded at various points over the last eighteen years, have not seen the light of day sooner. But better late than never. There is a lot to be said for artistic lifers, who are in it for love rather than money. They will keep producing, regardless of the extent of acclaim, so long as circumstances are propitious, and, more often than not, even when they are not. Miriam Ingram is one such, a truly independent songstress with a thousand friends and collaborators, and we are all the richer for them.

Link to album: https://miriamingram1.bandcamp.com/album/mariana-trench-2