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Caroline Ross: ‘Mount the Air’ by The Unthanks
77 Plays7 months ago
Bodies, brains, friends and lovers. This is a beautiful chat about a beautiful song - What more do you want? We laughed, cried and swayed our way through this one. We hope you do too.
Caro is an artist, writer and maker based by the sea, in Bournemouth. She makes paints, inks and pigments from foraged materials and ancient processes and wrote a book about it so you can too: It's called Found and Ground. Caro beams when she talks about writing, which has more recently gained a big readership under the name Uncivil Savant on Substack, and she takes serious joy in teaching courses and hosting workshops all over the UK and Europe. Significant eras include time recording and touring in a band, living on a boat on the Thames and both leaving and returning to art-making on her own terms.
Show notes:
Website: foundandground.com
Instagram: @foundandground
Welcome to Survival Songs, a podcast where each episode our guest tells us about a songs that gets them through the best and worst of times.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/286u8X9g8zCa5OODERzaPX?si=GK6SD3uhQt-2ztJ8ycCOOg
Help us a grow a community of survival song listeners by joining us on over on Substack:
https://survivalsongs.substack.com/
‘Mount the Air’ by The Unthanks by can be found on our community playlist on Spotify along with our listener’s Survival Songs. Check it out and add your own!
This episode contains small portions of ’ ‘Mount the Air’ by The Unthanks . Survival Songs claims no copyright of this work. This is included as a form of music review and criticism and as a way to celebrate, promote and encourage the listener to seek out the artists work.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Survival Songs'
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Lydia. I'm Ed. We're friends with a playlist for everything. And it turns out, we both have one called Survival Songs. And it got us thinking, what are other people's survival songs? So we thought we'd find out.
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to Survival Songs. A podcast where each episode our guest tells us about a song that gets them through the best and worst of times. Sensitive topics might be discussed. So look after yourself. The show contains portions of copyrighted material. We'd love for you to support and celebrate the artists by streaming, downloading and buying their brilliant music. And go give our guests a follow on social media.
00:00:38
Speaker
Help us grow the community of survival song listeners by joining us over on Substack and add to our public playlist on Spotify. Links are in the show notes. We hope you enjoy the show.
Meet the Guest: Caroline Ross
00:00:51
Speaker
Welcome back to Survival Songs. This week I am delighted to be speaking to Caroline Ross, who is an artist, writer and maker based by the sea in Bournemouth. She makes paints, inks and pigments from foraged materials and ancient processes and wrote a book about it so that you can do it too. The book's called Found and Ground.
00:01:17
Speaker
Caro beams when she talks about writing, which has recently gained a big readership under the name Uncivil Savant on Substack, and she takes serious joy in teaching courses and hosting workshops all over the UK and Europe. Significant eras include time recording and touring in a band, living on a boat on the Thames, and both leaving and returning to art making.
00:01:41
Speaker
on her own terms.
The Emotional Impact of 'Mount the Air'
00:01:44
Speaker
ah Caro did me a solid on her choice this week. I listened once and had a massive cry and then had to listen a couple more times so that I knew what song we were talking about. This is Mount the Air by The Un-Thanks.
00:02:16
Speaker
because i know i love the ha So that was a little bit of Mount the Air by The Un-Thanks, which is the survival song of our guest today, Caroline Ross. Thank you for joining me Carrow.
00:02:31
Speaker
You're so welcome. It's lovely. I'm so, so glad that you're here. um Although I am a little bit annoyed at you for choosing this song because it's the first one that made me cry and and I hate you for that a little bit. um Tell me about it. Tell me about this song. How did it find you? Why have you chosen it?
00:02:50
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Well, first I should say, um first time I heard it, it made me cry. So you're in the Cry First Club now, which is great. I'm annoyed. I've had plenty of goosebumps doing this project, but not tears yet. This was the first one. Absolutely no shame. um I first To my shame, I'd never heard of The Unthanks. I'm not a folk aficionado, um that even when I was in bands, reviewers would always go, oh, I kind of focus vocals from Karamos. That's just because I sung in a school choir as a kid. So I have this really like, st unless I really work at it, I have this standard English schoolgirl voice, which I sought to shake off so much. But I hadn't heard of The Unthanks and I hadn't listened to music for
00:03:36
Speaker
about 10 years, maybe even 12 years at all, ah apart from going in shops. I wouldn't play any music and I'd stopped even listening to the radio because I'd been in recording studios and bands for so long, like a whole decade and touring and touring. I'd had enough. It was like my ears just rebelled. So I was in this passage of like a desert of music.
00:04:01
Speaker
And then I was doing some work with some great people, and one of my colleagues who became a friend, he sent me playlists on this thing called Spotify. And I was like, press play. And tears welled up, there was all this music he'd sent, um new music, old music, music in common, like Kate Bush or whatever. But oh my goodness, when Mount The Air came on,
00:04:25
Speaker
i couldn't believe the beauty and it was like the kind of strings and orchestral production of something like mid period Nick Drake or you know it was or Astral Weeks by Van Morrison and yet there's these amazing northern women's voices which just literally my eyes just sort of squirt been And then when I listened to the lyrics, never mind the incredible arrangement, I couldn't believe that they were talking about love in the way they did, that it was a traditional song and that it was also somehow about soul retrieval, which was slap bang where I was at right in the middle of menopause and the great derangement. So yeah, I came across this song in the middle of inner turmoil and it's been being a rock.
00:05:15
Speaker
You're right, it's it's so beautiful isn't a big enough word. It soars, doesn't it it? It really goes places. This this isn't a way of, um I don't want to limit it or make it any smaller, but it reminded me a little bit of the snowman because I would watch that. Absolutely, committedly, every Christmas Day as a child and the way that the whole thing hangs on music and music is the most important part of that whole, you know, it was cinematic to me, but I could see imagery and you're flying over the sea as you're listening to it and you're in the sky, it's gorgeous. And as you say, there's as much music as there is lyric. It's a 10, nearly 11 minute song. um do you have Do you have a favourite bit or is that a terrible question?
00:05:59
Speaker
or a bit that you wait for? That's a great question and I always play it all the way through. like I would never dream of truncating it when I listen to it. um it It depends. i mean I really love the verses. so as that When they come in, I love the timing and the syncopation. um But near the end, when there's this ah everybody changing key altogether and it's just, I think it's, what are the lyrics? I can hear that you are with me.
00:06:39
Speaker
It's just, I will always cry and I literally can't sing along and I sing along with everything, um much to previous flatmates annoyance. But yeah, it's right at the end where you've got them all coming in and changing the refrain and ah it It has got, if you like, that snowman feeling. So a later, I saw this. I saw The Unpanks perform just after Covid.
00:07:07
Speaker
And I was with my friend who later became, has recently become my partner. He was an amazing person. And I was telling them how much I liked the un-thinks. And um he said, well, we could go and see them in Bath. So we met up to go and see them in Bath. And loads of people were still masked. We weren't, because that wasn't the rule, but that was fine. And I just said as we went in, after we'd had a curry, I went in and said, look,
00:07:34
Speaker
a mic cry if they play mount the air and it might grab your arm and like you might get a wet shoulder and i'm apologizing in advance and he said that's absolutely fine don't worry about it which is so nice anyway so they they did it i think it's the encore I know they did Sorrows Away, but the one one before, they did Mountain of Air, and they clog danced at the end. So they pulled out all the stops. You and me are both crying when we listen to it, but can you imagine the two lead singers, the sisters, clog dancing, proper Northumbrian clog dancing? It's like literally like how much more crying can you do?
00:08:16
Speaker
I was crying because of the music, the lyrics, the beauty of the band, the fact that lockdown was over, over and these beautiful women in their wooden clogs giving it complete welly. In fact, I've got tears coming to my eyes thinking of it. I don't know if I've seen anything so beautiful. It was absolutely stunning. And yeah, I ah made my beloved's shoulder very wet.
00:08:38
Speaker
or who is now your beloved. What a lovely story
Music and Menopause: A Survival Story
00:08:41
Speaker
to have at a time when you were friends and now you have this. yeah yeah One of the first shows or gigs that I ever went to after lockdowns was Lost Spell Songs. and I don't know if you've come across that as a Robert Macfarlane project with a whole bunch of incredible folk musicians and singers.
00:08:58
Speaker
And there was a very similar moment where I turned to my partner and said, if they play this one, I'm gone and you'll just have to deal with it. And then they did. and it My mask was soggy because we were all still masked at that point. um But I just, yeah, I wonder if ah folk folk music in that scenario just is going to break a person apart, isn't it? That's it's a storytelling medium. It's been around for centuries to do just that. And then we're in a a tender moment and it breaks through and it breaks as open and and that's it, we're gone. Totally that. And and it has that in common with um all great art. I mean, and I would include, especially include sort of at the in the end of the 80s when i I was still a kid, but my brother played great music upstairs always. There's the bass lines. That's why I ended up playing bass. There's bass lines coming through, there's like lead set. There was
00:09:48
Speaker
electric funk, but he was playing a Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, he was playing Grandmaster Manny Mano, he was playing all this really, really great hip-hop. and For me, that was that was the great folk music. I mean, that was American folk music and that's black folk music, but it was ah for me, when I look back, weirdly, I don't know if they've been in the same sentence, but the Unthanks and the rat the great hip-hop of the 80s said the same thing. they're like Life is really tough. You're going to miss the people you love. You're not necessarily going to get on. You might lose them. They are precious. And now check out these beats.
00:10:29
Speaker
Or whether it's like the club dancing or the amazing um street dance that I used to love watching in those days. Before people all got addicted to their phones and stopped spinning on their heads in the street, which I really miss.
00:10:41
Speaker
um But there is something in common wherever you are in the world. And I get it with Bulgarian folk music too with this crazy quarter tone harmonies, which I adore.
00:10:53
Speaker
There is, we sometimes need to get out of our heads and not via substances, although I think music is a substance and just as addictive, but it leaves you with such benefits. And the unsanks and that playlist from my friend brought me back to music after a decade away.
00:11:15
Speaker
Anna, it was like um there was a homecoming and in the lyrics of the song where, you know, I know that you are with me. and I know that you are me. There is this sense that something that was lost, it can be regained. So I should probably send a letter to the un-thanks to say thank you. I mean, completely undoubtedly, completely undoubtedly. I want to read that letter before it goes. You've alluded to it in quite a few places already, but I'm wondering,
00:11:45
Speaker
and if you could say more about what survival means for you or what it means in relation to this song because it sounds like the song arrived at a time where it woke up some things and it it supported some things that had been dormant for a while and but where's where's the survival in it for you?
00:12:02
Speaker
Oh my goodness, quite literally survival because um as you might know with friends as they get older with women friends, there's some people, I have one friend who had a menopause where she had period stop and she went, ah, it must be menopause and carried on. And that was it. There was like two days where she noticed something, which is wonderful. And I'm trying very hard not to be extremely jealous.
00:12:31
Speaker
And so there is wisdom at the other side. However, the the sort of five-year derangement with two years of serious severity mental health, I would say, was not to be sniffed at. And it was just before all those TB programs in the UK where they really started talking about it. And I was just like, how come I didn't know you went mad?
00:12:57
Speaker
how come no one said you could literally be another person? um And so yeah, it's when I say survived, um it helped me not end myself. And I'm glad of the support I had. But music was a huge part of that, like being able to cry and dance around my boat yeah and the swans would look at me strangely through the windows i'm not feeding you yet i just have to cry and dance a bit more and then i promise i'll feed you like okay swans get it yeah i'm 34 i've not experienced the menopause yet but i do know what it feels like for your body to be somewhere else to where your head and your heart are and and certainly music plays a role in that for me too so i'm sure lots of people would resonate with that idea
00:13:45
Speaker
Does it change how you listen to music to have been involved in the music industry?
Music Industry Reflections
00:13:50
Speaker
I mean, for you to have left it for 10, 12 years with just no music and makes makes me think that you yeah you really, really did need that silence for a while. But do you listen to music differently now, knowing what you know about it and how it's made and how how it's performed?
00:14:07
Speaker
Oh, that's such a good question. And I would i needed the 10 years to stop analysing everything and going, oh, well, they've used too much compression on that. And oh, why have they used that baseline? And that's a preset from an 808. That's a drum machine. um So I had to just stop getting annoyed at record production and how poor it was when it all moved to um away from real buttons and into these presets. after that I'm not going to get technical but that virtual machinery came into the recording studio and everything started to sound the same and it's measurable.
00:14:42
Speaker
But anyway, I had to put that down. And so I would say that I'm listening to music in a natural way again now, but clearly I'm not. And I was in the van with my work wife last year when we were in the States, and she was playing some of her favorite music, which is kind of American ah pop country.
00:15:00
Speaker
And I'm like, oh my God, there's way too much compression on this. And she said, what's compression? And I was like, oh wow, I need to explain this. I was like, well, imagine you've got waves and they've got ups and downs and just, oh, you've got a landscape and you chop the tops off the mountain and you fill in the valleys with them. That's like compression. Or it's like a brick of sound coming out of the speaker at you. And she went, whoa, I've never thought about that.
00:15:27
Speaker
it's like oh yeah no it's still there. I'm still analyzing everything but it's just a little bit lower down now. Yeah, but even just watching you because we can see each other as we're talking, although the person listening won't be able to see, in you and you're tracing the shape of those mountains and valleys, I'm thinking, well, here's the visual artist in her. She's hearing she's hearing things as a musician. She's seeing things as a visual artist. I get it. I feel you. I'm the same. But also, man, that's a lot to think about, isn't it? It's not a simple experience ever.
00:15:57
Speaker
No, and I needed those years and I needed the emotional roller coaster or something like Mount the Air to wipe the analytical mind, you know, the left hemispheric analyzing of all the music. I needed to wipe that clean. And the time, the kind of musical fast, if you like, has made the feast since much more delicious. I don't see the point in feasts without renouncing something before. And I really feel like music has come back to me tenfold, but it needed me to go away to appreciate it and not to be... It's like picking apart a relationship. I need to be a friend to music now and um not the the person wagging my finger at music. So, yeah, music and I get along okay now. And we occasionally have a fling.
00:16:49
Speaker
but i'm I'm curious to know it's a mammoth of a song. It's beautiful, but it takes 11 minutes to be with it. How often are you listening to this? Where are you listening to it? What are you doing while you're listening to it? Is it still the one where you're crying and dancing? You live by the sea and there's a lot of um ocean references in this song. I'm wondering if they have a relationship. can you it In whatever way feels comfortable, can you paint a picture of your 11 minutes with this song?
00:17:20
Speaker
ah Yeah, I mean, there's two places I'll hear it. So I'll be in my flat. um It's got a big living room that we're talking in right now. And if if it's someone in the playlist that I'm playing that day, I might be doing the ironing, but I'll stop and I'll turn the iron off and then I'll start dancing around to it and singing along and kind of crying and maybe having a cup of tea. So I'll listen to it in my flat and then I'll listen to it all the way through because it just came on. I probably won't put it on.
00:17:47
Speaker
or I'm on a train and I've got my headphones on and I've got really good noise cancelling headphones for the screaming children avoidance and and then I'll actually put it on and I'll have a little weep and actually actually when I'm coming back down and from seeing um my lovely man and I'm like I miss him so much I'm just gonna play something and make it worse because I'm not a teenager or anything. Don't listen folks if you're 52 you're actually 15 and a half but
00:18:18
Speaker
That's how it actually feels. So just if you're younger than me and listening to this, don't worry. It's going to get dramatic and exciting again. I promise. That's so hopeful and brilliant. I've really, really loved this caro. And it's so um for people who aren't aware of your work yet.
00:18:35
Speaker
your ah approach to this song and the the way that you dance with it is so congruent with the way that you think about the world and the way that you dance with beauty and um the kind of the gifts that you point to for other people to look at.
Where to Find Caroline Ross' Work
00:18:50
Speaker
If people do want to find out more about what you're up to, where would they go looking? For art things and my book on the art materials, natural art materials and ancient things.
00:18:59
Speaker
um just Google found and ground and you'll find me there's like an extraordinarily out-of-date website and a very up-to-date Instagram but for writing and um and actually my movement practice and the Tai Chi stuff that came out of the silence that's at uncivil savant which is unsubstack um Yeah and I love writing now so um it'd be nice to meet people there but that's generally where I hang out. That's actually what I should be doing. And that's where we met so I'm i'm really really glad that it's there. Thank you for this Caro, I've had the best time chatting to you about this song. It's been my pleasure, lovely to talk to you too.
00:19:49
Speaker
We really hope you enjoyed the episode. If you want to support the podcast further you can choose to upgrade your subscription on Substack, but most of all we'd just love it if you told your friends about what we're up to. Thanks for listening.