Keep it Safe The Breath

• 1 Keep it Safe 04:48
• 2 Unravelling 05:25
• 3 Too Many Have Gone 05:35
• 4 Close to the Bone 05:27
• Total Runtime 21:15

Info for Keep it Safe

"Keep it Safe" denotes the struggle for balance and revisits a time of personal shut down. The beauty of what your mind can do to protect you when your heart is sore.

“We’ve both had ups and downs with mental health over the years, and the music reflects that with a yearning melancholy. The tempo mirrors the feeling of pushing through - steady, head down, but always moving forward (much like you do under the grey skies of Manchester!) At the same time, there’s an underlying strength that comes from the need to 'Keep It Safe.'” (Stuart McCallum)

Ríoghnach Connolly, voice, shruti, flute
Stuart McCallum, guitar, effects

The Breath Ríoghnach Connolly and Stuart McCallum are the creative heart of The Breath. And for them, it’s all about the song.

Connolly writes the only way she knows how; a stream of poetic consciousness giving rise to honest, personal, heartfelt songs as likely to touch on childhood summers and first love as cultural dislocation, post-colonial injustices and grief. But it’s her deeply soulful, utterly engaging, stop-you-in-your-tracks voice – whether delicate and hushed or powerful and gutsy – coupled with Stuart’s understated brilliance and their exquisitely crafted songs, that give The Breath such emotional depth.

‘Let the Cards Fall’ – with pianist John Ellis, bassist Sam Vickery and drummer Luke Flowers – is the follow-up to their 2016 breakthrough album, ‘Carry Your Kin’. A bewitching collection of songs allowed to mature and breathe without losing the widescreen, multi-textured kaleidoscope of sound that marked their debut, while refining their trademark Manchester take on alt-folk.

This album contains no booklet.