Directed by Luca Rudlin

Taken from The Breath‘s sophomore album Let The Cards Fall, released on 14 September 2018.

The song is a delicate, wistful ode partly inspired by Queen Macha, of ancient Irish legend and the namesake of Armagh, Ríoghanch’s birthplace. Everyone needs a role model and Ríoghnach opts for Macha; who “rode on to the battlefield nine months pregnant, slaughtered all around her and then gave birth right there.” She can be maternal as well as murderous. Ríoghnach also invokes Suhail, a bright star on the southern horizon that becomes a protective deity, for ‘my brothers, caught in the crossfire’: ordinary people, vulnerable to the processes of history.

The song exemplifies the great clashing virtues of the pair. Ríoghnach, possessed of Celtic primitivism and visionary intimacy, Stuart, a guitarist of considerable tonal range, is ethereal and searching, never content to slip into conventional form and thrives in the gap between freedom and restraint. The picking pattern, he informs, derives from Villa-Lobos’ Etude No. 1. There’s a feeling of a lull before the storm, a respite that offers space for nurturing and healing.