6. Iris DementThe Trackless Woods
A few months ago, I got a train to Glasgow to see my beloved Iris Dement. I got a sleeper train back the same night. It was the most fun I’ve ever had on my own. I’m surprised to be choosing something so late in her career, but this is extraordinary work. She has taken the words of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova and set them to music, partly in response to her adopting a Russian child. I find it redundant to reduce an artist to ‘a voice’ and Iris is so much more that, but the sound she makes provokes such an immediate physical effect in me. She makes me cry so often.
