See: Siobhan Wilson - Marry You

Siobhan Wilson departs from fragility and arrives in a fiercer place with the video for latest single ‘Marry You’.

In 2017 Siobhan Wilson released her critically acclaimed album There Are No Saints. We adored it for its sheer beauty, but also the way it showed us a darker side to Wilson’s music that we had only seen glimpses of before. At the end of my review of that album, I stated that there was much more to come from her. She’s now back with new album The Departure (out 10 May via Suffering Fools Records) and, if single ‘Marry You’ is anything to go by, this release will see her showing us so much more of her exceptional artistry by exploring a more expansive sound.

The video for ‘Marry You’ (watch it below) sees Wilson walking purposefully through a dark wood that looks like something straight out of a new Nordic noir series. It’s beautiful but eerie and I wonder if she’s soon to be a victim of the thing that lives in the wood or whether she is someone to be scared of, hanging around in the dark. As the video progresses we see her standing completely still in the half-light between tree trunks while confidently staring down the camera lens at us and at one point she’s even holding an owl. It quickly becomes clear that this isn’t a story where Wilson is to be feared or feared for, instead it’s a demonstration of fierce independence – a lack of fear in the face of the darkness.

“I hadn’t previously hung out with an owl,” she confesses, “but I do spend a lot of my time walking outdoors contemplating things, dressed in black, so this didn’t feel like much of a different setting for me.” She also notes that she instinctively knew the video for ‘Marry You’ should be shot outdoors, saying “The dark tone of the song fitted well with the colour of the trees in that spot, but the spots we filmed in also capture the dark and mysterious tones of Scotland and its nature, which I am very attached to. I felt quite at home.”

The song itself is one I fell in love with when I first heard it played live by Wilson in her recent Celtic Connections festival set. The unmistakable sweetness in her vocal is contrasted with the heavier guitar-driven sound, achieved with her new Baritone Gretsch. Lyrically, the song rejects the restrictions we impose on ourselves and the idea of waiting for a cue from someone else in order to do something in your own life – all cleverly played out through the context of a marriage proposal – “If indecision is your decision, I do not need your permission”.

“I’m at an age where some of my female friends wonder, ‘When will he propose to me? What is he thinking?’” Wilson explains. “And I wrote a song that’s like: you propose to him, you are allowed to do that now.” The idea of impatience is perfectly summed up when she sings “Somebody tell him to stop messing around”.

With ‘Marry You’ Siobhan Wilson makes a powerful return and shows she’s definitely not messing around.