CityLife

Getting the camp fire vibe burning

Raven And The Lyon

Holed up in a Salford recording studio last autumn, Manchester folk duo Raven And The Lyon diligently set to work on making their debut EP.

Working hard against the clock, with only a day in the studio booked, the Prestwich outfit – comprising Caitlin Lyons and Raven Wakefield (hence that band moniker) – braced themselves for the rather daunting task of recreating the luscious melodies and deft arrangements of their celebrated live shows on to record.

Emerging from the studio ten hours later, the pair, fretting anxiously about their completed recording. Thankfully, they didn’t have to wait very long for the first rave review of the Raven And The Lyon debut EP.

 “We were leaving the studio, which is above this old pub,” recalls Lyons, the singing, guitar playing and songwriting half of the duo. “And this old man sat by the bar said ‘I love your music – you need to release it straight away!’ He’d been sat in the pub all day, listening to our music through this little window. It was just the best thing to hear; this complete stranger giving us such a nice compliment.”

Such effusive praise is fast becoming the norm for this most wondrous addition to Manchester’s ever-expanding nu-folk family.

Certainly, as an advert for that folk family’s sustained longevity, the Prestwich duo emphatically tick all the correct boxes.

Purveyors of sun-dappled, heartfelt acoustica of the Joni Mitchell and Carole King songbook variety, theirs is a folk formula which might initially entice listeners with its breezy pop melodies, but it’s the duo’s detailed, layered arrangements that will ultimately win over the real folk aficionados (and any curious pub drinkers).

This attention to detail, we soon discover, is a key aspect of the Raven And The Lyon creative process.

First convening in their garage-cum-rehearsal space in Prestwich last summer, Raven And The Lyon – then both 17 years old – quietly bided their time until they were the required legal age to play Manchester’s more elite music venues.

A period when you literally couldn’t move in Manchester for the sheer quantity of live music festivals, Manc music 2011’s golden summer was, for these two Prestwich teenagers, little more than background noise as they holed themselves up in their garage with acoustic instruments, Joni Mitchell albums and a firm commitment to creating their own pastoral-pop utopia.  

“I think it was important for us to wait until I turned 18 before we started gigging properly,” Lyons explains.

“It almost gave us a little deadline; I turned 18 at the end of the summer, so we had those whole two months to rehearse and rehearse and get our sound just right. Even though we’re just a two-piece, there’s a lot going on in the arrangements of our songs. We spent a lot of time working on that until we sounded perfect.”

You couldn’t fail to notice. Owing more to venerated song queens like Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell and Carole King than the current crop of ukulele-strumming Brit folkie hopefuls, the duo’s unashamedly old-fashioned folk-pop classicism pulls off that tricky balancing act of being as intimate as confession, yet anthemically Radio 1 playlist-bothering at the same time.

It is a balance that makes perfect sense as you enquire further about Lyons’ creative process: a self-confessed daydreamer, she talks of “enjoying the thinking time when I’m travelling alone on a tram... I love to jot down lyrical ideas”; while her fondness for rabble-rousing pop sensibility is credited to her family’s Irish roots. “When I was growing up,” she recalls, “all the family get-togethers would end up turning into this huge sing-song.

“I’m from a huge Irish family and everyone would bring their instruments and join in with traditional Irish folk songs.

“It sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s definitely something that’s influenced the way I write.

“When we play live, I want to capture the warmth and camaraderie of those family get-togethers. It’s that everyone around the camp fire vibe.”

Both raised in Prestwich with their family homes only a few miles apart, Lyons and Wakefield didn’t first cross paths until early 2011 when, through a friend of a friend, they ended up performing together in a four-piece folk outfit called Not For Now (“Not really the best name is it,” Lyons cringes).

However, it was a project that would prove shortlived, thanks to their now estranged band members’ “lack of commitment,” chides Lyons.

“We had another member who wrote and played guitar, but he couldn’t be bothered coming to rehearsals. Me and Raven didn’t know each other very well at this point, so we could have easily packed it all in.”

Thankfully, the pair persisted with their scaled-down line-up (occasionally helped out by a percussionist), spending that whole summer assembling a sublime live set that has clearly nudged them ever nearer to the front of 2012’s Manc fem-folk invasion, jostling for position alongside the likes of Rachel Hillary, Emma Elizabeth, Danielle Kerwick and the most excellent Literature Thieves.

It’s an accolade, however, that sits rather uncomfortably on the girls’ young shoulders. Lyons agonises about the dichotomy of playing live, of “how musicians essentially need to be quite vain people to get on stage and expect people to listen to their songs – and we’re definitely not vain people”, while Wakefield still can’t believe people have actually recognised them on the street.

Especially when the girls have never summoned up the courage to approach the one band in Prestwich who they truly regard as real musical gods.

“We’re the biggest Elbow fans,” beams Lyons. “I’m always seeing Guy Garvey out and about, but I’ve never plucked up the courage to speak to him.

“I saw him in a coffee shop the other day, and I was thinking to myself, ‘Do I say hi? Do I go and talk to him about my band?’ I ended up doing nothing in the end. They’re like the ultimate inspiration for any new Manchester band: with them it’s all about working hard and just becoming better songwriters with each album. And that’s surely all that matters.”

Raven and The Lyon play Dry Bar on Friday, February 24. For more info visit – facebook. com/ravenandthelyon