Jenny Sturgeon - The Living Mountain (2020)

In a review of the 2011 reissue of Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, Nicholas Lezard wrote in The Guardian that, within eleven pages, he was ‘giddy with something halfway between delight and vertigo.’ Shepherd’s writing seems to inspire that reaction in everyone who reads it: she is able in a few short phrases to alchemise the heady effects of her beloved Cairngorms into a form that is potent even for people who have never been there. Viscerally as much as intellectually potent. Shepherd’s gift was her ability to write almost as if she was a part of the mountain, or rather to erase herself – in a manner reminiscent of Eastern philosophy – and present us with the essence of the landscape. As a result, The Living Mountain, which was completed in 1944 but not published until 1977, is now regarded as almost a sacred text in the broad genre of nature writing, a book that effortlessly combined ecology, philosophy and poetry while never straying from its own distinctive and beautiful wilderness.

Shepherd’s book tends to inspire a kind of quiet and lyrical fanaticism in its readers, and naturally many wish to pay homage in some way or other. But the latest album by Scottish singer Jenny Sturgeon – also called The Living Mountain – is perhaps the most involved, loving and thorough tribute the book has received. In fact, it is more than a tribute. It seeks to reflect and interact with the Cairngorms in the same way that Shepherd’s book did, and Sturgeon has gone to extraordinarily detailed and loving lengths to make sure it succeeds. The result is something that stands alongside the book and alongside the mountains and has a kind of symbiotic relationship with both.

Sturgeon has previous experience when it comes to creating music in response to a certain landscape. Her 2017 EP The Wren And The Salt Air was inspired by the natural and human history of the island of St Kilda, while 2016 debut album From The Skein dealt in part with the folklore of the Scottish countryside. But The Living Mountain is a more immersive and more ambitious project altogether. Sturgeon hails from the north-east of Scotland, and her affinity with its topography is deep and lifelong. Here, she anchors herself to the mountains, almost literally, by underpinning the entire album with a continuous field recording made in the Cairngorms. The conceptual importance of this is evident, but it also has an aesthetic relevance, creating a sort of base-note that permeates every song and ties everything together. First track The Plateau (each song takes its title from a chapter of Shepherd’s book) echoes Lezard’s words from that 2011 review: ‘these dizzy heights release me’, Sturgeon sings. Like Shepherd, though, she is in thrall as much to the dewy minutiae of the mountainside as its steep climbs and precipitous drops. She is perfectly aware that the sweeping contours and striking silhouettes cannot exist without ‘the mud and the heather.’

Sturgeon’s voice, bell-clear and softly accented, is foregrounded throughout the album. The Recesses is a lesson in restraint, a hymn to the mountain’s smallest, darkest corners, but also to the vastness of existence. The lyrics are all wonder and simplicity, and it is all tied together by Sturgeon’s singing, awed but always in control. The Group, meanwhile, is the most literal attempt to speak from the mountain’s own point of view. The lyrics are direct and elemental while the music – a ripple of strings, minimal acoustic guitar – has a timeless and beautifully stretched-out quality. Andy Bell’s production, here and across the album, is subtle and unobtrusive.

The lyrics of two songs – Water and Man – are adapted from Nan Shepherd’s poetry. Water is both descriptive and meditative, Sturgeon’s voice ringing high above a peaty drone, while Man moves along at a jaunty flicker. It’s one of the album’s most melodic moments, and its delight in warmth and companionship brings to mind the songs of Vashti Bunyan. Musically, Bell’s production is perhaps more prominent here than elsewhere: there is a hint of Beth Orton about it.

Frost And Snow recreates the dramatic shapes and creaking sounds of the Cairngorms’ sculptural formations of snow and ice, delighting in the language of freezing weather with its sastrugi and its cornices. Air And Light tells a more human story of embarkation, excitement and the unknown. It begins with an expressive guitar section, played by Sturgeon on the guitar that was made for her especially for this album using reclaimed Scottish wood salvaged from a fishing boat, a pier and a bar. It’s another example of just how far her perfectionism extends, how far she is willing to go for authenticity.

There are songs dedicated to the mountain’s flora and fauna as well as to its rocks and its weather. The Plants is a loving inventory of the region’s trees and flowers, and Birds, Animals, Insects begins with the Ptarmigan’s weird, almost unearthly call before a sedate and meditative piano usher in an incantation in praise of habitat and movement and sound.

For an album that is incredibly personal and at times quite minimal, there is a wealth of collaborative talent on show. Mairi Campbell’s viola infuses Sleep with the contented glow of end-of-day warmth, while Su-a Lee provides the cello that haunts the background of The Senses, co-written by Sturgeon’s mother, Annie. It slips by like a dream on a simple, stately piano motif, and doesn’t feel anything like its six minutes.

The final track, Being, is an attempt to take something away from the mountains, to learn from their wisdom in order to ‘find out who we are’. It’s a simple message really, but an important one: wilderness is valuable. Not as a commodity but as something that is rooted in human consciousness but also something that dwarfs human consciousness. Nan Shepherd understood this paradox better than anyone, and her writing has found a perfect musical equivalent in Jenny Sturgeon’s stunning, snow-encrusted and sun-dappled songs. She has created a work of rare beauty: to hear The Living Mountain is to hear the song of the Cairngorms.