Following the 2010 release of The Fallen By Watch Bird, Jane Weaver has gone on to issue a further four conventional albums – there are also remix sets, reconfigurations, collaborations and soundtracks. A new album is planned for 2026.
Before the release of The Fallen By Watch Bird, Weaver had issued two albums, a mini album and was a member of Kill Laura and Misty Dixon. She first appeared on record in 1992.
Looking for markers within all this is evidently a challenge. Which releases are the most significant, the ones marking step-changes in her approach to music? Going solo is doubtless important, but the arrival of a perhaps slightly premature 15th-anniversary edition of The Fallen By Watch Bird – peculiarly marketed as “Jane Weaver Classic Collection” – brings pause for thought.
The Fallen By Watch Bird was subtitled Septième Soeur, a credit relating to the female presence on the album, which included Susan Christie, Wendy Flower from Wendy & Bonnie and Lisa Jên Brown (9Bach), and also its concept as “Seven Chapters of Cosmic Aquatic Folklore.” Original copies branded Weaver as “Jane Weaver (Misty Dixon).”
The album was originally issued by Weaver’s own Bird label (which was tied to the Finders Keepers imprint) – as were its solo predecessors Seven Day Smile (2006) and Cherlokalate (2007), and its immediate successor The Silver Globe (2014). Now, the 2010 album reappears on Fire, the label she is currently linked with – her first Fire album was 2017’s Modern Kosmology. With (disappointingly) no previously unheard tracks, the new The Fallen By Watch Bird comes as a gatefold-sleeve double set on coloured vinyl; the second album is the 2011 follow-on release The Watchbird Alluminate, which featured reworked versions of tracks from its parent album, with collaborators like Susan Christie, Alison Cooper, Wendy Flower, Andrew Shallcross, Emma Tricca as well as Demdike Stare and The Focus Group. Original pressings of both albums fetch around £20 apiece, so this £30 telescoped edition is a wallet-friendly alternative to seeking-out individual copies.
Beyond the anniversary aspect, The Fallen By Watch Bird is and was notable as it marked a coalescence: a seamless amalgamation of elements which were previously present but on a discrete basis – the freeze-dried, spacey folkiness suffusing Cherlokalate, Misty Dixon’s folktronica, as well as an increasing embracement of Hawkwind-esque dynamics, Gallic-style soundtrack experimentalism (of, say, Michel Colombier or Jean-Claude Vannier), the outer limits of US folk and folk rock, the edgier aspects of continental European pop and raft of influences drawn from central and eastern European cinema and television. A possibly bitty mélange was instead a unified whole. (pictured left, the 2010 CD version of The Fallen By Watch Bird)
What sealed the deal was that none of this was explicit, and that the songs were actual songs – nothing on The Fallen By Watch Bird was or is testing. It just is. It is a cohesive auteur-driven album. Thrilling in 2010, it is still an absolute joy. When The Watchbird Alluminate arrived it confirmed that the song was core: the reworking did not eviscerate this vital characteristic.
After The Fallen By Watch Bird and its related undertakings, the mind-blowing The Silver Globe arrived in 2014. It had become clear that Jane Weaver was in for the long haul, a course she still – strikingly – shows no sign of abandoning. This reissue provides a reason to revisit The Fallen By Watch Bird. Or experience it for the first time.
- Next week: the thread connecting pub rock and punk rock – Eddie & The Hot Rods’ Teenage Depression and Life On The Line albums reappear as a two-CD set
- More reissue reviews on theartsdesk
- Kieron Tyler’s website
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