Folk stopped being a countryside story a long time ago. It mutated, stratified, sent its roots into electronica, post-rock, chamber pop, soundtracks for Scandinavian television dramas. A good formula, but long since transparent, and the listener who adores folk has already learned to tell aroma from substance within the first thirty seconds. In this context, the arrival of “Under The Apple Tree” by Juliet Howland is an event with a false bottom. At first glance — yet another record about gardens, dreams, horizons, sunsets, and sunrises. An apple tree on the cover. Twelve tracks. Mezzo-soprano. Folk-country, ballads, choral numbers. Everything in its place, all the furniture in the room arranged in the usual way. But the moment you press play on the first track, something begins to happen that the formula is powerless to explain.

It comes down to the hands. Literally: Juliet Howland plays a multitude of instruments herself, writes her own lyrics, composes her own music. The album in its entirety is a solo project. And it is precisely this fact that transforms “Under The Apple Tree” from just another folk release into something bespoke: you can hear a single person constructing an entire world — from rural landscapes to nocturnal city panoramas, from an apple orchard to a medieval castle. Twelve stories told by one voice, one pair of hands, one heart. And the scale of that vision is felt physically.

“Dragonfly Days” opens the album with the crunch of spring air. Folk-country in its purest, lightest incarnation — the kind of sound that instantly transports you to an apple orchard where birds sing and cats scrap. Howland‘s voice here floats, soars, bounces with energy — a mezzo-soprano capable of rivaling field butterflies in weightlessness.

“Fly Without Wings” shifts the register immediately. The contemplation deepens, a light female choir appears, and the soloist’s soprano drifts somewhere higher, merging with the heavens. Here the album reveals its central theme for the first time: romantic anticipation. Green grass, a high hill, natural landscapes stretching to the horizon — and somewhere beyond that horizon, perhaps, that very love.

“Pedestal” is a turn. Piano, night, cityscape. Stars seep through the curtains, and something angelic hangs in the air. The album abruptly relocates from pastoral idyll to urban reverie, and this gesture is one of the most successful on the record. Howland poses questions about the universe to the accompaniment of keys, and the scale of thought here expands from the personal to the cosmic. Behind the cooling windows, lights flicker, and a dream pushes its way through the clouds.

“Wild Mountain Thyme” is an a cappella number. A polished ensemble performs a classic folk hit in an entirely original fashion. This is one of the riskiest moments on the album: to take a familiar song and sing it with voices alone, trusting the listener to believe. And the listener believes — because richness, beauty, and lyricism intertwine here with the first rays of a sunrise, producing an effect of total immersion. The kind of moment when you want to abandon everything and simply savour it.

“Carry My Soul On The Wind” is the first genuinely melancholic track. Here there is sadness, old photographs, memories that remained just that — memories. Howland maps out the steps toward happiness, leaning on the past. The track moves slowly and deliberately — the gait of a cat before a pounce, soft paws, a precise calculation of the distance to the target. Predatory grace and lyricism at once. Femininity concentrated to its limit.

“The Gift” is the duality of the female nature in its purest form. Beneath the soft exterior lies a temperament that is difficult to resist. The keys roll in like waves, and the star prepares for takeoff. The decisive step seems far off, yet it has already been taken. A single about energy hiding beneath ribbons and bows — and therein lies its power.

“The Devil’s Guest” pulls the album into the Middle Ages. An abandoned castle, ghosts, centuries-old secrets — the mystique of chivalric tales that scholars are still trying to decipher. Freezing sounds, black silk, a sensation of mystery. Howland unveils a legend, and the track becomes a gothic miniature embedded inside a folk album.

“I Saw From The Beach” is a return to the light. A stroll along the ocean shore, a glass of sparkling wine, a silk pashmina, apricot rays of sun. Love, dreams, and hope weave together into a harmonious trio, and the album breathes fully once more.

The closing “Epilogue” is a mirror point. The most tender lyrical ballad, keys, a delicate instrumental canvas. Thoughts drift gently toward nighttime skyscrapers, toward lights, toward stars. Night falls, and the album sets a pause before the road into tomorrow. A conclusion brimming with strength, life, and hope.

If one is to nitpick — and one wants to nitpick, because the album is good enough to deserve an honest conversation — “Under The Apple Tree” occasionally places too much trust in its own formula of dreaminess. Contemplative tracks follow one another in succession, and by the middle of the record you risk growing accustomed to that airiness, the way you grow accustomed to the scent of an orchard when you live in one permanently. The balance between folk, ballads, and choral numbers is constructed carefully, yet several tracks in a row occupying the same register can slightly dull the perception.

And yet, it is precisely at that moment that the album reveals its true strength. Wait for “The Devil’s Guest” with its medieval mysticism, or “Carry My Soul On The Wind” with its predatory feline grace — and you realize that Howland knew where she was heading all along. The contemplation of the first half turns out to be a running start, a preparation for the deeper, darker, more complex stories of the second.

Juliet Howland has made an album that whispers. Quietly, confidently, insistently. One artist, a multitude of instruments, twelve stories — and the sensation that you have been on the grass, by the sea, in the city, in a castle, at sunrise and at sunset, even if all that time you were sitting in your headphones. That is a rare quality. And this is the kind of album you want to return to when your dreams stall, the future is blurred, and life is asking for a pause — because Howland has already found where that pause sounds best.

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