Songs of the Week 2026: Take 1

Neil Morton

FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK

Take This Day: Salt House

January is a time for reflection, of what might have been and what might still be. Albums and songs which somehow passed you by in the old year suddenly re-emerge to bring new cheer. We should not have missed folk trio Salt House’s beautiful album Scarrow, and certainly not its lead single, Take This Day, a belated Song of the Week at herecomesthesong.com. We’re making up for lost time.

Scarrow means faint light, something that gleams dimly or intermittently. But this album glows brightly and Take This Day, written and charmingly sung by newest member Anna Hughes, is a quiet joy. The track is a poetic celebration of stillness and the little, unexpected pleasures of life on an album that promotes community, hope and shared moments in uncertain times.

There’s a grace in the surrender

To this unadorned contentment

There’s a place for potential

In the course of this conversation

When time has turned to gold

And every sunrise makes us old

Hold on

Our sorrows are not grand

Not when we dwell so idly

And all our hollow hands

Never held tomorrow so lightly

When time has turned to gold

And every sunrise makes us old

Hold on

Days like this will come

We made the pub our church

And we made those songs our scriptures

We pulled up on the verge

And we made the stars our future

When you’re frightened of the clock And you wish the tide would stop

Or for the sand to turn to stone

So you can build yourself a home

Hold on

Hughes’ music, whether through the medium of violin, viola or tenor guitar, is inspired by the wonders of the natural world, a perfect fit for Salt House. Part of the Northumbrian duo Watersmeet with Jessie Howard, Hughes replaced Lauren MacColl who left Salt House in 2024, after their lauded Riverwoods album, to pursue other projects.

The Salt House sound is influenced by the landscapes of Northumberland, the Scottish Highlands and Shetland, the respective homes of multi-instrumentalist Hughes, guitarist Ewan MacPherson and Jenny Sturgeon (harmonium and guitar). They incorporate bucolic life into the fabric of the music that speaks of a mutual love of place, people and evolving tradition.

The band took their name from a dock in MacPherson’s native Liverpool. Raised in Wales, he trained at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts before moving to Edinburgh in 1999. His songs, like all the Salt House originals, feel as if they have been here for decades while ancient ballads and texts are given fresh voice.

Apart from their solo work, all have been generous collaborators: Sturgeon with MG Boulter, Birdvox and Outliers, Macpherson with ‘folkedelic loonies’ Shooglenifty, Malinky and Nu-Nordic quartet Fribo, and Hughes across diverse projects including her duo. Their alliance with The Furrow Collective was warmly received.

Scarrow is produced by old cohort Andy Bell who contributes synth with Ben Nicholls on electric and double bass and Magnus Lundmark on percussion. Hughes’s other contributions are equally spellbinding: the deliciously dark I Met At Eve, inspired by a Walter De La Mare poem; the gorgeous Waiting For Summer; and Headed Our Way, a wake-up call from birdlife about the damage we inflict on the environment.

You’ll learn the hard way

The hardest hit by the blistering wildfires

Headed our way

We designed height

You chopped it down

To build your buildings higher

And banish us to ground

So we designed flight

You made yours loud

Sent your engines roaring

So you could travel on a cloud

Sturgeon’s Snow Walking is a delightfully clever foot-tapper; Fathoms is a lament to a lover lost to the sea; and Blackbird is a love letter to a feathered friend (‘His chorus is our song’) – she has a PhD in seabird ecology. MacPherson’s Jansch-like timbre reverberates through Horizon, Cut Him Out In Little Stars and the lovely Share The Light, making this an album to savour.

The harmonies by Sturgeon and Hughes on the latter interweave magically over the fireside glow of MacPherson’s tender vocal in a song that encapsulates Salt House’s central message about the importance of connection: ‘I love it when the fire is glowing/ And bright the moonlight on the wall/ I love it when the music’s flowing/ And later when the talk is low.’ The light on Scarrow is far from faint.

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