Atmospheric strings build a soundscape from folk and psych to support excellent songs.
Singer-Songwriter Bird, otherwise known as Janie Price, has released a new full-length album. Held Here Together is made up of her two recent EPs, 2025’s Heads Or Talesand Strange As Folk from earlier this year. This can be a risky strategy as reusing material again quickly can put off existing fans. On this occasion it may well be a marketing masterstroke as she has a tour supporting Ward Thomas to expose her to a whole new audience, and 3 new songs to keep her current crowd happy.
Bird’s trademark sound is rich, swelling strings building what would otherwise be relatively bare folk songs into something that Van Dyke Parks would be proud of. The song order on Bandcamp is different to that sent to us, pulling Havana Garden out front to open proceedings, with what would be the establishing shot in a movie. That rearrangement alters the atmosphere of the album, as the cinematic nature of the whole set becomes far more obvious.
A song called The Film is next, although it is the opener on other platforms. A strong song with a slide guitar used to build atmosphere in the same way it would in a film set in the dustier parts of Texas. The strings swoop around her voice, following it and reacting to her words, and we are building a sense of Bird as a setter of scenes as much as a teller of stories.
The Boy And The Swan starts as a more overtly folk song, cooling the mood a little, before opening up into something with a psychedelic sweep which includes brass, banjo, and electric guitar, buried in a soundscape which fills up the space and shifts direction as the tune develops. This is the point at which we realise that “Bird” is not just her chosen nom de music but also informs her approach to her sound. If The Film was a solitary bird in the sky, then The Boy And The Swan is a flock wheeling about in harmony.
An intriguing version of The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now is turned into another 60s psych-influenced arrangement. Following that, we have Winter Rose, a mix of James Bond theme (as played on her Cello) with a Dylan-influenced folk song. Mostly stripped of the big arrangement, her songwriting still shines. This time her co-writers are Nick Southwood and Ross Bell. Not as big as some of the other names who have worked on Bird’s writing with her, but they do bring out a delicacy which contrasts with the wider landscape she works in elsewhere. After this is where Havana Garden sits in most versions of the running order, slightly awkwardly tacked onto the end of the LP’s side one.
Side two opens with The Car, a recent single and a solo write which shows off more of the delicate side of her work. Strings are present but further back in the mix, allowing her voice to sit right against your ear. That voice blends bits of many styles into a conversational, almost whispered sharing of her thoughts. Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay, taken like The Smiths song from Strange As Folk, is next, and is given acres of space, and a reggae beat that is as close to funky as Bird gets.
Roy, written with Ally McErlaine of Texas, is written around the legend that Roy Orbison intercepted a plot to steal the body of Elvis Presley. This was developed from her work directing the short film on the same subject, You Found A Friend In Elvis. The sliding strings of Daddylead into two songs written with Travis’ Andy Dunlop. Sunny Days has a slightly Bossa Nova feel, and you could imagine Françoise Hardy singing this behind Bird’s own Cello solo. Things Get Broken is the song played over the credits and is just Bird and guitar, an effective coda to the album and a fine conclusion to the film which has clearly been playing in her head as she sings.
This is not your typical fare for AUK, but as a way of taking elements of folk from this country and the USA, and classical music, it builds a unique sound which enhances her songwriting, producing something truly timeless.
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