Rowan Rheingans - The Lines We Draw Together review | Jude Rogers's folk album of the month

The Guardian 80

Drawing on stories about life in 1940s Germany, this handsome album contains a powerful narrative about racism and intolerance
(Red Dress Records)

As rising mainstream folk stars go, Rowan Rheingans cuts a bold figure. This year, she followed the first run of her one-woman show Dispatches on the Red Dress (which is currently at the Edinburgh festival until 26 August) with talks that included Holocaust education campaigners and anti-racism activists. The Lines We Draw Together, Rheingans’ first album solo away from her sister Anna, with whom she has bagged BBC Radio 2 Folk awards and sundry nominations, is similarly full of songs inspired by her grandmother’s childhood in 1940s Germany. At a distant listen, it is immediate and pretty, as many often-nominated Radio 2 Folk award works are.

But as its delicate sound twists apart in woodwind-textured arrangements, its narrative starts to break through. “We always look skyward to see what is coming,” begins What Birds Are. “And then without warning the Earth begins moving.”