In The Low Light – Album Review

Folk songstress Lucy Kitchen knows what it’s like to be emotionally wounded. But as her third album demonstrates, she also knows what it’s like to live to tell the tale. Robert Plummer marvels at her ability to turn sour into sweet.

The first snows of 2026 have fallen and the mood calls for bleak midwinter music. Something plaintive, something folky, something that features a small yet strong voice standing up to a harsh world. Something exactly like the music of Lucy Kitchen, in fact.

For more than a decade, Kitchen has been plying her trade in and around the Southampton area, with occasional sorties further afield. Her two previous albums have earned her a bunch of devoted followers, charmed by her skilful blend of Anglo-Americana filtered through singer-songwriter culture. But in the nine years since her last full-length collection of songs, tragedy has cast a shadow over her life: her husband Stephen died of cancer in October 2022.

In The Low Light is her response to the storm that threatened, but failed, to capsize her. Opening song Winter King sets the scene, with its air of aching absence and otherworldly foreboding. “I would drink you down like I’ve been parched for years/Oh if only you were here,” Kitchen intones mournfully over elegiac mellotron and a drumbeat that resounds like the crack of doom.

It’s a walk on the darker side of folk that gives Beth Gibbons a run for her money. And if nothing else on the album quite matches that initial salvo, the remaining 10 tunes still pack a punch of their own. Take the ethereal soundscape of In My Corner, with its delicate banjo and pedal steel touches highlighting Kitchen’s address to her departed spouse: “I’ve been searching the seasons for your spirit – or your ghost.”

The languid string-laden chamber-pop of The Ways We Were continues to look back in sorrow. However, it’s followed by the reflective Olivia, which switches the focus by offering advice to a lovelorn friend. “Sometimes the ones that we love aren’t the ones that we should/It tears at our hearts and it does us no good.”

Subtle changes in the instrumental line-up add colour and variety to the musical mix. A wistful brass coda rounds off Blue Light, whose cosy campfire vibe belies its subject matter of regret for the end of human warmth (“Baby it’s cold/With no-one to hold me/Now you’re gone”). The strings return for the sad sweetness of Milk And Honey, then double-bass and flute sounds bring a springtime feel to the pastoral Sunny Days.

Feel-good country tones predominate in Red Skies, the album’s first single. A little light hedonism (“Let’s lose ourselves to the night”) rubs along uneasily with omens of trouble: “There’s devils in those skies tonight.” That tees up the last trio of tunes, a song cycle giving vent to the grief that’s been gathering all along.

First of the three is the bluntly titled Chemo Song, in which Kitchen describes watching her husband sleep off the effects of his medical treatment. She holds her breath as nature struggles to shake off the freezing weather outside, with the birds “singing away the winter cold”. However, her man is engaged in his own struggle and she knows what is coming: “I love him so/I’m not ready to let him go.”

The Boatman is the album’s most sombre song, the moment when all the accumulated distress finally bursts out. Its first lines are arresting: “I’m gonna bury my grief/Beneath the brown and rotting leaves/Of this stormy winter.” But while her feelings are raw, her innate melodic sense buoys the tune, giving resonance to its message of hope amidst the hopelessness: “I will see you on the other side.”

Finally, the unadorned acoustic strum of September’s Come feels like the calm after the turbulence. Kitchen has come to terms with her loss, “longing and accepting”, and is eager to express her state of mind in the way she knows best. “I’m full of songs/They’re pouring out my blood,” she sings: while the summer sun is fading, she is ready to “head south where it lingers on”.

It’s a cathartic end to her psychological journey, a restoration of inner peace and equilibrium after all the mental torment. Yet although Kitchen bares her soul during the course of the album, her songs carry true emotional heft without being depressing. Her fortitude is inspiring, as is her artistry: songs of suffering have rarely sounded so uplifting.

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You can find Lucy Kitchen online at https://www.lucykitchen.com/. She is also on Facebook here, on Instagram here and on Bandcamp here.

All words by Robert Plummer. More writing by Robert can be found at his author’s archive. He is also on X as @robertp926.