If you are a lover of all things folk, I’d like to offer you a Christmas gift from the North. Canada’s critically acclaimed and well-loved folk duo Big Little Lions has been releasing one single every month during the pandemic. The pair Helen Austin and Paul Otten discovered they could create Juno award-winning music in 2014. Since then, their folk project Big Little Lions has released six albums and shows no sign of slowing down.
Independent Music Reviews is pleased to feature this month’s release From the Storm. It will warm your Christmas atmosphere with the cozy ambiance of gentle, folk-pop acoustic guitar rhythms and layered string textures. Austin and Otten’s vocal harmonies are perfectly enmeshed, executed as if they were not two, but one. It’s just good music. It’s soft and gentle, yet enticing with its upbeat tempo and the lovely, soaring melodies of the chorus.
The winter imagery of the lyrics pulls this song right into me, into my present. It’s like an internal soundtrack for my December days, now encompassed by white snow and blustery winds. The folky warmth of the guitars and circling vocal harmonies seem to circle me in warmth on the inside. “It’s time to feel the sunshine.” A good word for the whole world as we brace for the bleakness of Omicron.
Winter holds you, winter told you
This is where you belong.
You didn’t bring a coat,
I will keep you warm.
I know I can protect you
From the storm.
The creative excellence of Big Little Lions has garnered well-deserved recognition on CBC’s Top 20, earned the John Lennon Songwriting Competition Song of the Year, and received placements on CBC’s cherished storytelling venue The Vinyl Cafe. Their previous single Never Mind the Weather was nominated for the Canadian Folk Music Awards Single of the Year 2021. If you like what you hear, keep in touch with each month’s new release.
