Duo Ruut: Ilmateade review – soft psych-folk channels hazy days and snowy rides

The Guardian

20-06-2025

Duo Ruut (Square Duo) are Ann-Lisett Rebane and Katariina Kivi, two Estonian musicians who write, sing and play facing each other, their instrument being a single kannel (an Estonian zither). Playing with the texts and repetitive motifs of runo song, a form of traditional oral poetry specific to the Baltic Finnic languages, their music holds a glistening minimalism in its rhythms and a crossover sheen in its sound. Rebane and Kivi's voices help – often sweet, but also sharp when required.
Their ambitious second album Ilmateade (Weather Report) explores the powerful yet under-sung connections between the weather and emotion. It begins with the minute-long Intro, a track that builds gorgeously on the scratchy, dying notes of their 2021 EP, Kulla Kerguseks (From the Lightness of Gold), implying both continuity and metamorphosis.
Then we're in Udu (Fog), lulled along on thick, beautiful clouds of shifting time signatures, before Vastlalaul (The Sledding Song) slows and speeds, glossily, through the snow. These songs are rhythmically complex and have solid, ancient roots, but fans of ambient, Balearic dreaminess and the softer sides of indie pop and psych-folk will find woozy comforts here.
Good entry points include the earwormy melancholia of Vilud Ilmad (Gloomy Weather) and the itchy handclaps, in five beats to the bar, propelling us through Suvi Rannas (Summer on the Beach), in which we're told, in Estonian, of days hot with horseflies and a sky broad and bare.
Other Estonian artists brought into the fold provide different depths. Guitarist Erki Pärnoja's solos swirl around the women's wordless melodies on Interlude, while poet EiK 2509 adds spoken-word contributions to the mesmerising Enne Ööd (Nightfall). All together, these 12 tracks create a hypnotic shipping forecast transplanted to the Baltic Sea, carrying us along on its eddying tides.
Jennifer Reid's The Ballad of the Gatekeeper (self-released) is a full-blooded fantastic debut from a singer who researches 19th-century broadside ballads, has acted in BBC Two's The Gallows Pole and supported Pulp and Eliza Carthy on tour. Mixing centuries-old working songs with new material about fast fashion, climate breakdown and Covid, she's a striking talent – her a cappellas especially full of bite. Brìghde Chaimbeul's Sunwise (Tak:til/Glitterbeat) eerily transports us from high summer to songs of midwinter. Her smallpipe drones are less abrasive than on 2023's brilliant, abrasive Carry Them With Us, but her canntaireachd singing (a style deliberately vocalising bagpipes) is more propulsive, heavy and completely compelling. Similarly bewitching are Norwegian trio Hekate. Their new album, Evigheten Forestår (Eternity Imagines), collects slåttetralling (Norwegian vocal dance tune improvisations) from across their homeland, their tones by turns spiky, perky, sad and sacred.