Recently, London-based band Firestations released the project’s fourth full-length album Many White Horses via Lost Map Records. It immediately took our attention for it’s unexpectedly intimate storytelling and marine-bound themes. Conceived and largely recorded by lead songwriter Mike Cranny during a sailing expedition around the west coast of Scotland, the album weaves together sparse acoustic arrangements, field recordings and poetic reflections on the natural, particularly oceanic, world. While this trip began as a personal venture to escape from the English metropolis, it transpired to be ideal inspiration for this deeply atmospheric and emotionally resonant collection of songs. Cranny was joined by longtime collaborator Laura Copsey on flugelhorn, flute and vocals, which added to the immersive experience, reminiscent of turbulent life at sea and the quiet returning to land. For On The Record, we spoke to Mike Cranny about the voyage that inspired Many White Horses, the beauty of creative limitations and why this stripped-back record still feels unmistakably Firestations.
Welcome to Unrecorded! For those who aren’t already familiar with Firestations, can you introduce the project?
Hi! I’m Mike Cranny the main songwriter and band “leader” (I guess, for want of a better word). “Benevolent Dictator”, perhaps?! You’d have to ask the others…
The others being Laura Copsey, Martin Thompson (aka Bit Cloudy), Tom Hargreaves and Neil Walsh – together we make up Firestations. We’ve been around for a bit now, with some line-up changes and different directions over the years. Sometimes we’re fast and spiky and other times slow and dreamy, but usually it hangs together with my song writing as the anchor. We’ve got quite a back catalogue going on at this point – most of which has been released by the amazing Lost Map Records, including the new album.
Your new album Many White Horses was conceived during a sailing expedition around the west coast of Scotland. How did the trip influence the emotional tone and lyrical content of the album?
It influenced the album 100%, in that it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone on the trip. I wasn’t planning to write an album; I was looking for an adventure and a new creative focus away from my London life and home studio. I thought at best I might write some lyrics and vague song ideas based on my new surroundings, but in the end it became much more than that.
The phrase “many white horses” originates from the Beaufort Scale. What drew you to this term for the album title? And how does it reflect the themes within the music?
The sailing expedition – run by Sail Britain and curated by Laura – was made up of seven artists and two sailing professionals. We were all crew, in the sense that we helped (or tried to) with the sailing part, but the artists were there to work on their creative practice – painting, writing, collage, photography, music etc.
One of the first things we did together was read the Beaufort Scale and appreciate the simple poetry of it. I liked the evocative phrase “many white horses” as it seemed to neatly capture the state of the sea when it gets choppy and foamy; you can really see the “horses” rear up and fade away. I wrote a basic song idea trying to make it feel like a boat swaying in a rough sea – it sums up how it felt for me on the boat, and the other songs are all tangentially related to that feeling as well.
There’s a strong presence of field recordings and found instruments throughout the album. Can you share one or two moments where those recordings captured something unexpectedly magical?
The tracks The River Knows and Reading The Water have got as their main parts the recording of me playing guitar in a cabin on the boat. I like how it also captured the background noise of the crew talking and laughing the background, as well as the low hum of the engine and the creaking of the wood. That doesn’t ever happen in a quiet studio.
Also, The Castle Is Wrong features a piano that we came across in the Isle of Rum community hall. It was terribly out of tune, but I quickly played and recorded a few random things on it – I love how it’s turned into a kind of horror film soundtrack. I could never have imagined it would work so well.
You’ve also used an “aging sea-warped boat guitar” with open tuning limitations, so how did embracing those constraints unlock something new in your songwriting?
Yeah, that guitar was a challenge for sure! As you say, it was majorly sea-warped, and the intonation was way out in standard tuning. The only way I could get it to sound ok was to tune it to open D and put a capo on the fifth fret. I’m not an expert with opening tunings, I only know a few chord shapes, so the physical state of the guitar combined with my abilities in that tuning meant that simplicity was the answer. Lots of song ideas came quickly and naturally and I think that helped to make it a cohesive piece of work, as opposed to the multiple guitars and loads of midi instruments that I normally have available.
Our favourite track, ‘A Weight Starts to Lift’, features highly intricate fingerpicking. How did this technique evoke the emotional or physical landscapes that are key to your album?
That’s the track where I pushed the boat out (sorry!) with my technique. Trying to hint at all those great folk/bluegrass fingerpickers like Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, John Fahey, Bob Dylan… so many greats. My aim with this one was to evoke a feeling of going on an adventure and not wanting it to end. Feeling changed by the experience and wanting that change to continue into my everyday life back home.
The closing song, ‘Silversands’, ends on a serene, almost accepting note. What do you hope that listeners take away from the album?
That’s a difficult one – I think a songwriter only has so much say over what a listener takes away. The feeling I personally was aiming for/getting from Silversands is basically: life is short, but that’s ok. The self is important, but not that important. The islands, the mountains, the trees, the rivers will outlive us all, and that’s a comforting thing.
Some tracks were written after returning to London, reflecting on the disconnect between sea and city life. How did this contrast further impact your album?
The first track on the album All The Way Back Down Here sets the tone for that feeling of disconnect. I was trying to hold onto the feeling of being away, at sea, on an adventure, while readjusting to the reality of work and everything else that we deal with in our everyday lives. It’s definitely an album written from the perspective of a city dweller reflecting on wild places and in that sense I guess it’s kind of classically romantic. Although I like to think that, in keeping it personal and lo-fi it avoids being too sentimental or grandiose; still, it has a yearning quality to it, which I hope helps to transport the listener away from their everyday concerns.
Compared to previous releases like Thick Terrain, this new album sounds like a departure but still unmistakably Firestations. What sonic threads tie this quieter album to your more expansive past work?
It’s really down to my song writing approach, I think. Initially, I wasn’t entirely sure that it was a Firestations album, but other people listening to it (particularly Johnny Lynch, aka Pictish Trail) helped me to see that it did fit with previous stuff. I do find it pretty hard to be objective about music that I make.
We have also done a fair amount of alt-folk in the past (see our “sunken versions” on the Automatic Tendencies EPs), and I’ve come to view Firestations as more of a project than a classic five-piece band – guitar, bass, drums type-thing. Although I love that side of it as well.
After this intimate release, do you see Firestations returning to a bigger band dynamic for future projects or is there more sea-bound solitude in your sights?
I’ve just been away in a camper van, but nobody needs a collection of sad acoustic songs about how badly I slept on my holiday or the difficulties of parallel parking in a large vehicle, so no… I reckon the next thing will be full band release. In fact, we have already recorded an album’s worth of material, so keep your eyes and ears peeled!
You can also listen to title-track ‘Many White Horses’ in our Folk This Way playlist.
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