From start to finish, Anna Ludlow’s Wherever You Go is like a collective breath of fresh air. With only a couple of lyrical tracks, Ludlow prefers to let her fiddle do all the talking, and the result is magic. She’s managed to build a strong narrative, inspired by her culture, history and life experiences.
“Deep Dark Mine”, for example, is a song about Ludlow’s father and his family’s experience living in a coal-mining community in Cape Breton. Ludlow’s lilting voice accompanies the soft plucking of strings in a haunting recounting of the life of a coal-miner, the good and the bad. The song is inspired by stories Ludlow heard from miner’s as a child, and a result the tone takes on a nostalgic shift. Ludlow manages to replicate that spirit of unity so well, you’d believe she was down in the mines with them.
Ludlow also lends her voice to a rendition of the late Ron Hynes’s “No Change In Me.” The lyrics lament the loss of home and being forced to leave all you know behind for a better chance at life. Newfoundland is lovingly described as a piece of Hynes’s heart, a familiar slice of home. Though Ludlow herself hails from Nova Scotia, she’s still able to match that level of sadness. As someone who spends a good chunk of her life travelling and touring, she has plenty of her own life experience to draw inspiration from.
It’s the bulk of the album where Ludlow communicates purely instrumentally that really demonstrate her talent as both a musician and a storyteller. The environments Ludlow builds on this album are vividly lifelike. One can’t help but taste the salt air of the ocean or feel the crash of waves on the cliffside. The pictures Ludlow paints are fresh and exciting – both familiar and completely foreign.
“The Hurricane”, which closes out the album, is frantic and epic and chaotic just like a hurricane would be. It’s a hell of a track to end on. Conversely, “Eva’s Tune” is a delicate track plays like a lullaby. The soothing swell of the strings is accompanied by crystalline piano is a saccharine combination that would fill anyone’s heart with love.
Then there’s “The Mayflower”, which opts for more of a worldbuilding effect. It’s a lively jig that conjures imagery of its namesake – a ship headed for new horizons, the fire of hope and promise in the chest of every passenger aboard. Ludlow perfectly captures the excitement and bustle that would have been present, especially in the way that the tempo frantically builds in the last act of the song.
It would be easy to say Ludlow has created an entire world within the confines of this album, but it wouldn’t be accurate. The reality is that she’s managed to bottle the essence of everything around us – the people, the cultures, the very elements themselves. She harnesses that energy the best way she knows how, and it makes for an invigorating listen.