Natur, track by track: Eve and Serah discuss their elemental new album, Natur

Stephen Price

Welsh singer-songwriters Eve Goodman and SERA share their long-awaited collaborative album Natur today, a hymn of love to the cyclical element of women and nature, and to mark its release day, the celebrated artists have given Nation Cymru a unique insight into each of the beautiful new album’s tracks.

Ranging from a whimsical sea shanty about a Menai Strait mermaid to an evocative acapella spell-song; from a love song inspired by a moth, to an ode to emotions and the weather, this is a meaningful and creative folk songbook.

The album is a rich and varied journey from percussive, hooky ear-worms about burnout and modern life (Anian), to expansive and moving Celtic blessings that sing of reverence for the land (Bendith).

Eve Goodman and SERA (Sarah Zyborska) began working together when they were both selected as BBC Horizons Artists in 2019. Both women, with rising solo careers, grew up in Caernarfon, North Wales. After just one writing session they found common ground in their connection to and curiosity around nature.

Surrounded by the beautiful north Wales landscape that is such an important part of their lives, they began to explore the Welsh names for birds, trees, flowers and the more-than-human world.

The song tendrils soon grew to touch upon the cyclical element of both nature and women. Soon enough a body of work was growing, each song a celebration of both. Natur was born.

They shared: “We both loved the Spell Songs project (ft. Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart et al) and the way the songs serve as a call to reawaken our love of the wild. We approached our songwriting with this call in mind in the language of our land, Welsh. As one of the lines in our song Anian says ‘I cofio ein natur, edrychwn ar natur’ (to remember our nature, we look to nature). It’s about accepting our wild nature in an increasingly complex and digitalised landscape.”

Here, both Eve and Serah talk us through each track on the album…

The whole web of life

We start the album with Bendith, which is the Pilgrims blessing. And it was actually the last song that we wrote. But we decided to open the album with it because this song talks about going on a journey. And we kind of feel that the album is a bit of a journey through nature.

And so it felt appropriate to start with it. It’s also very bare. It’s just voices and a shruti box providing a drone. So, we wanted to start with it because it’s quite a special song.

And then we move on to Anian. Which I has been my favorite, throughout the whole process, because once we got into the studio and played about with it, it became something very different to anything we’d ever done before.

We did a lot of vocal improv. We make up a lot of nonsensical words, which gives it a little bit of a witchy feel. Moving on, then, to Llinyn Glas.

This one is our fun folk song. We’ve created a new folk tale based on a woman who wants to escape her life by becoming a mermaid living in a Menai Strait. It was a really cool opportunity for us to look at Welsh names for different sea creatures.

Cwlwm Cariad

Then we go to Cwlwm Cariad. This one is is piano and voices, and it was done in a live take. It had until this point’s been very much a guitar song, so it did take on a new life at at the studio, and we decided to stick with it because we capture something quite special, I think with this. And it’s a song about a moth, (the true lovers knot), and flying too close to the sun and being lured in by the false promise of bright lights.

Tangnefedd is track number five. This was our Can i Gymru/Song for Wales entry, back in 2023, a different version though of the song. We have reworked it here for the album. And this talks about the weather and it has a ukulele going through the entire song.

It doesn’t stop, so it’s quite gruelling on my fingers! It’s quite a delicate song, and I think we took some inspiration, production-wise from Bon Iver here. Yeah, really love this one too.

Blodyn Gwyllt, that’s kind of our most Americana feeling song, and it’s about wildflower. And facing the elements and being free and being flawed. This one is guitar driven and there’s some beautiful slide guitar by Gwyndaf Williams.

Then we go to Tymhorau. The seasons. We moved through the seasons, and this again is quite a gentle song. We’ve got some lovely little sounds in the song from wind chimes and from leaving the door open in the studio.

This one took a little while to to find its feet and we tried different versions. In the end, we decided to keep it minimal and let it have space to breathe.

Then we go to Rhwng y Coed, which is a new version of a song that we released back in 2020. So that does exist on on Spotify already, that other version. This one is quite different and is much more acoustic than the original version and is again another live take one.

We don’t have violin or mandolin on this, like in the original, just guitars, and it’s a simpler version.

This is the very first song that we wrote together back in 2019 when we sat down together to try out this songwriting partnership, and we wrote this song because we wanted to write about the Welsh words for trees and plants and birds, and it was the start of the whole thing, really.

Then we go to Gaeafgwsg, which again is another re-reworked version of a song that we released in 2020. It’s about hibernating – Gaeafgwsg is winter sleep.

And it is, I think, probably the most beautiful song that we’ve written. It is very gentle and comforting as well. It feels quite Christmassy without being a Christmas song!

“A happy accident”

And we finish the album with Wead y We. Now, this one was a bit of a happy accident because we wrote the song as a very simple song. We repeat a lot of lines and t’s quite vague in its narrative.

It’s meant to be about the whole web of life, about how everything is connected (Which I think is a nice way to end the album, because that’s what the whole album is. It’s all connected. It’s all about nature.

We’ve spoken about birds and trees and the weather and all kinds of thing connected with nature and how we all depend on each other to function)

It’s a very simple structure and lyrics and so we went into the studio really open-minded about how this would be. And we did two takes. We sung it one way, and then recorded another take where we tried something else. And we literally put the two takes together.

That created its own web and all these layers on top of each other and intertwined. So it was quite like a happy accident. It was a complete experiment. But we’ve kept it, and then the song builds as it goes along adding a few things for atmosphere. But again, we’ve kept it quite simple.

So, yeah, the whole idea of the album is, you know, keep it simple, have space to breathe, and just accept the songs and our voices as they are, so hopefully that gives you a little bit of insight.

The album was recorded, mixed and co-produced by Colin Bass, the bassist from 80s prog rock band camel. He even plays bass on many of the tracks. It was great working with Colin, he really took our lead and was there for advice when we asked for a second opinion. We loved working this way, it felt very freeing. We had a great time recording in his garden studio in the foothills of Llanrwst, in a beautiful secluded spot surrounded by his flock of sheep, donkeys, cockerels and beloved dog.

Buy Natur on Bandcamp or listen on all streaming services.