Rising Welsh singer-songwriter Rona Mac has already established a reputation for her stripped, intimate and raw songwriting, gaining acclaim across press and radio alike. The new album Honeymilk and Heavy Weather sees capitalises on recent success, capturing her finest work to date.
Across the eleven tracks, Honeymilk and Heavy Weather combines delicate melodies with poignant undertones, creating a dynamic and emotionally rich listening experience. Blending alt-folk, Americana, and pop influences into a colourful and evocative body of work, the album jumps between tracks of just gentle organic textures, moments of warming lo-fi electronica and others of full band indie folk, but always retains Mac’s emotional, delicate and effortlessly alluring vocal delivering. Intimate and personal and broken up by recordings of voice notes from a close friend which range from moments of joy to profound sorrow, the result is tracks which feel like the innermost personal thoughts or diary entries.
Comparable to the likes of Bon Iver, Adrianne Lenker or even Phoebe Bridgers, Rona Mac’s music has such a pure, emotionally honest quality that shines across the new album.
Inspired by the love of friendship, the album arrives following one of the hardest periods in Rona’s life so far, a time shrouded in grief and ongoing illness. As she prepares to undertake a 15-date, independently booked tour to support the album’s release, Honeymilk & Heavy Weather will also receive a physical vinyl release following a successful Kickstarter campaign with profits from CD sales being pledged to support local charities.
Explaining the close nature of the project and her friendship with Emily, Rona explains, “Throughout the album there are scattered recordings of voice notes and spoken word pieces that she sent me over the years, varying from her sing-song happy voice, to the deep-chested voice of a woman carrying a world of pain. It was a big decision to share these with listeners, but in the context of the album as a whole it would feel incomplete without her husk in there.
This album is also tied to some incredible friendships. We shared the very best and worst together and learnt about the furthest corners of platonic love and loss, as we have grieved many people in recent years. I have reached deeply into the veins of these shared feelings: the beauty in the light and the grime of the darkness; the rugged joy of fireside howling and swimming in your clothes; self-destruction and group repair; blurred lines of love and who cares anyway; an immeasurable amount of raucous joy; of listening to sad songs together and feeling the weight lift.”
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