Hermitess Releases Album 'Death & The Fool' | Shares “Lines In Our Hands”
Photo Credit: Heather Saitz
May 1, 2025 – Hermitess, the enigmatic folk project of Jennifer Crighton, presents Death & The Fool, a mesmerizing exploration of memory, lineage, and metamorphosis. The album serves as both a memento mori and a living tapestry of sound, blending historical fragments with raw, improvisational spontaneity. Hermitess will celebrate the album release with a show tonight in Highline Brewing in Calgary.
Together with the album release, Hermitess shares the focus track "Lines In Our Hands," a melancholic piece anchored by delicate acoustic instrumentation and Crighton’s evocative vocals. The song is a wistful folk meditation on the transience of life and its recurring cycles.
Death & The Fool embodies two entwined forces: Death, the immutable current shaping all existence, and The Fool, the untethered wanderer stepping fearlessly into the unknown. Drawing from folk traditions while defying their boundaries, the album layers Crighton’s signature harp melodies with hurdy-gurdy drones, cascading vocal harmonies, and sweeping string arrangements. The result is a work that feels equally intimate and expansive—a ritual in sound, moving between sorrow and exultation.
Rooted in personal and ancestral narratives, Death & The Fool traces the contours of loss, resilience, and the cyclical rhythms of nature. Each track acts as a thread in a larger story, where the past is not static but alive, whispering through every note. Death & The Fool sees Crighton blending cinematic string arrangements with swirling vocal harmonies to craft an album that moves between grief and celebration, folklore and modernity, the ephemeral and the eternal. The album traces the ever-turning wheel of life, reminding us that even in death, the story continues.
Album Cover
Death & The Fool
Track List
Side A
1. Lines In Our Hands
2. Three Bells
3. Green Blade
4. A Fools Errant
5. Winter Cometh
6. Come Back
Side B
7. Ariel’s Song
8. In That Country
9. While We Wait
10. A Harp & A Horn
11. The Birds Never Left
12. Swansong
13. Band of Fools
14. Full Fathom Five
About Hermitess:
Hermitess is the project of an aging and slightly reclusive witch, dreaming simultaneously in music and images. Sonically, layered orchestral textures, harmonic voices, and pedal driven magic, all conjuring a fleeting fever dream. Live Performances currently include: Jennifer Crighton, Chris Dadge, Keith Rodger & Richard Gallant & Nathan Godfrey