Much like Kate Rusby, Fowlis has said in the past that she’ll stick to playing trad tunes and in Gaelic. Despite more mainstream attention from Disney’s Brave and being the foil to Mark Radcliffe at the Radio 2 trad awards, you could forgive her to bowing to pressure from the marketing men. However she’s stuck to her guns and delivered another stunning album.

Speaking to the Scotsman last year she said, “To me, the language and the music, the song and the poetry, they are all completely linked, you can’t really separate one from the other. You can’t separate pipe tunes from the Gaelic language because one influenced the other; the rhythm of the pipes comes from the words and the words come from the melody of the pipes.”

Along with a new album, Julie also just been announced as the headliner for this year’s Hogmanay celebrations in Inverness. The ‘Red Hot Highland Fling’ will also feature Manran, another Highland group who seemed poised to make more of an impact on the mainstream music scene. I suppose we can’t have them all to ourselves!

 

Gach sgeul is out now on Machair Records.