Kristin Daelyn has now returned with brand new single, ‘You Loved Me Anyway’. A delicate, tenderhearted song which feels like the product of the aforementioned isolation, stepping out into the world having arrived at newfound truths. Namely the realisation that imperfect people are still deserving of love, and that accepting such gifts can be an act of kindness of its own. These sentiments are captured with real sensitivity, just picked acoustic guitar supporting Daelyn’s soft vocals, establishing an atmosphere that is solemn but warm and sincere too.

I never felt so bare
I never felt so safe
I told I was scared
you loved me anyway

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Back in 2020 we reviewed the debut Delv album, Waning, appreciating how this cross-genre style allowed such nuance and detail. “There’s an energy embedded deep within the track that shows itself in small flashes,” we wrote of single ‘Back of My hands’, “a hard seam of determination that’s sometimes stumbled upon during close introspection.” The track was representative of the entire release:

The description could stand for Waning as a whole, an album of tenderness and vulnerability that nonetheless finds strength in running its fingers along its bruises. There can be great meaning in quiet, a depth of understanding to be found slowly and alone. Living up to its name, Delv pushes down into this space, taking you by the hand so that you too might come to know its contours

Now Delv has returned with a new release, Gardens and Plantings, one which tears up the traditional album cycle in favour of something more fitting of its themes. “Conceptually,” reads the press materials, “[Leigh] wanted to do something unconventional that mirrored the slow and steady, introspective pacing of our time in quarantine.” What emerged is twelve-part series of monthly singles, songs that will eventually be collected in a full album at the end of the year.

With it’s patient croon and melancholic swells, latest single ‘The Light Out’ introduces the sound of the release. Exploring ideas of feminine fluidity, the record lives up to its title in its slow burning growth, sonic representations of concealed gardens and plantings that develop slowly over time, and ‘The Light Out’ is the perfect example. A graceful song of quiet reflection, though the gentle mood belies the power that sits beneath its surface. A seed slowly gathering nourishment from the soil around it, strengthening itself in order to eventually break out and bloom.

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This month saw the release of the debut Delv album, Waning. Following the above formula, the record highlights Leigh’s careful hand when composing. Many an artist has added synths to their folk music and inadvertently buried the human core, but every additional element in Delv’s arrangements work together to accentuate the emotions present in the vocals. Opener ‘Wildfire’ is a great example, a reserved track of wistful rhythms, the barely-there synths washing behind Leigh’s gentle vocals. The result is a natural kind of emotion, the sensation of viewing a landscape and finding some energy beneath the surface—the triangulated point of beauty and loss and latent violence that lies within the natural world.

Single ‘Two Shadows’ is “a song about two lost people finding one another,” Leigh explains. “They wander together with no destination. But because they have each other, the experience of being lost is magical.” With the vocals echoing through a misty late-night quiet, the song is something of a slow epiphany. What if the present was the destination all along? What if there is nothing better or more fulfilling ahead of the the moment?

Coloured by the realisation, the track is wistful and sad, already mourning for the when the present is in hindsight, while also struggling against this loss in the hope that change can be held at bay. “Our love is like two shadows dancing under street lights,” Leigh sings. “Wandering through the night to nowhere. And I hope we never get there.”

Some tracks, such as ‘Bottom Line’, push further into electronic influences, adding a beat to certain sections and lending an immediacy that juxtaposes well with the drifting melodies. Others opt for stark simplicity while some blur the distinction. ‘Back of My Hands,’ with its steady rise from placid restraint to affirming crescendo, is firmly in this latter camp. Stirring from near silence, there’s an energy embedded deep within the track that shows itself in small flashes, a hard seam of determination that’s sometimes stumbled upon during close introspection.

The description could stand for Waning as a whole, an album of tenderness and vulnerability that nonetheless finds strength in running its fingers along its bruises. There can be great meaning in quiet, a depth of understanding to be found slowly and alone. Living up to its name, Delv pushes down into this space, taking you by the hand so that you too might come to know its contours.

Waning is out now and available from the Delv Bandcamp page.

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