Steven Wilson’s Album Village, and the Film Behind It
Steven Wilson’s Requiem For A Village uses folk-horror and Andy Partridge’s lyrics to argue that villages trap their inhabitants, even the dead, as church bells give way to ominous clatter.
Tracklist
- Swirl in a Lark’s Eye — Steven Wilson
- On Chapel Slope — Steven Wilson
Transcript
Swirl in a Lark’s Eye — Steven Wilson
Steven Wilson took the title Requiem For A Village from an obscure mid-1970s folk-horror film he says he saw in a BFI restoration. He says he loves that film tradition, and recalls feeling like an outsider in cut-off villages on childhood holidays. On the album’s opening track, Paul Sinclair describes church bells giving way to ominous clatter, then distant schoolchildren singing. Actor David Tennant delivers a spoken introduction written by XTC’s Andy Partridge. It ends with the words: “The village is alive.” Hear Swirl in a Lark’s Eye by Steven Wilson.
On Chapel Slope — Steven Wilson
Andy Partridge’s words don’t end with David Tennant’s opening narration. Midway through Steven Wilson’s Requiem For A Village, the short instrumental “Hiraeth” leads into “On Chapel Slope,” with lyrics by Partridge. Wilson says Partridge suited the project because he’d written about rural England and grown up in what Wilson calls a parochial environment. Reviewer Paul Sinclair describes the song as slow and spacious, and quotes its refrain: “You’ll stay with us / as stones / evermore.” Sinclair reads that as even the dead being unable to leave the village. The line returns on the album’s closer. Hear On Chapel Slope by Steven Wilson.