Canadian string quartet The Fretless join forces with Madeleine Roger for a poignant celebration of the Scottish Highlands in the new video for ‘Caledonia’. This is an absolutely stunning track brought to life on the screen and filmed by Anandi Brownstein. With Eric Wright on cello, Trent Freeman on Viola with Ben Plotnick and Karrnel Sawitsky on violin (credited as fiddle) this is a lineup that at first glance seems to be a traditional string quartet, but this is not neo-classical, it is pure roots music magic. The video is a simple performance with Roger and the group in a recording studio.
‘Caledonia’ started off as a poem, written by Roger on the banks of the Moray Firth near Inverness in Scotland. She describes the inspiration for the words. The song is told through the eyes of a traveller, a settler-Canadian with ancestral roots in the UK. Madeleine notes, “the lyrics are a love letter to the awe-inspiring landscapes, and the feeling of having come home. It was all so familiar: the grassy mountain valleys, the endless sheep fields with fences made of piled-up rocks, and the dramatic cliffs hanging over the ocean. I dreamt momentarily of leaving everything behind and staying there forever.”
This is the second single from their new full-length LP, ‘Glasswing’ due on 13th September from Birthday Cake Records.
