Yvonne Lyon & Boo Hewerdine Things Found In Books Album Review 9th March 2025
Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine's new album “Things Found in Books” is available now and is perhaps one of the more unusual albums of recent years. The inspiration for this album and its title comes from a visit some seven years ago to the secondhand bookshop in Culzean Castle, near Maybole in Ayrshire. On a noticeboard there, entitled “Things Found in Books”, was a display of all the things that had been found between the pages of books.
Instead of being discarded (as many people would have done with them), these items had been carefully curated onto a display on this notice board.
It is, therefore, most appropriate that this album is packaged as a 64 page hardback book with the song lyrics printed next to the objects that inspired them. Ekphrastic writing like this is nothing new, often the source of inspiration is artwork in a gallery, but in the hands of writing talents like Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine something very special can happen and here it does as their words breathe a possible life into these forgotten pictures, letters and paper ephemera. Combining this writing with music that reflects these new stories behind these images is also a tribute to their skills as songwriters.
As human beings, we seem to have an ancient inbuilt instinct to tell stories about the people, landscapes and objects around us, and here a strange empathy with a physical item. Sometimes that will be a letter, a photograph, an object of clothing or something that has, like many of these items, been very personal to someone during their lifetime. We may not know, or may never even find out that connection to their original owner, but something inside of us still wants to imagine that we know, that somehow these long discarded objects are connecting to us, giving up their secrets.
Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine are two of the finest of contemporary songwriters, and each has their own very distinctive approach to both words and music. The title track of this album, “The Things You Find In Books” is classic Boo Hewerdine writing that is pared down to the essential words whilst giving enough information for us, the reader and listener, to start imagining for ourselves a far bigger story. Likewise, Boo’s “Marion and Sydney”, inspired by a photograph, gives a hint at a possible day in the life of two people that we never knew, but somehow feel that we now know so much about.
With “Salvador Dali and Me”, Yvonne Lyon takes this iconic artist and some of his most famous images as the inspiration for reflective memories. Taking a newspaper cut out asking where missing trees on Kate’s Avenue have gone, Yvonne creates an almost mystical character out of a woman called Kate, and it is a charming, heart-warming story of a person who perhaps knows some ancient knowledge that most of us have forgotten.
Sometimes there is a sharp sadness to these stories and “Navy Cut” by Boo Hewerdine is one of those. A less skilled writer would have taken the imagery of a packet of old Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes and made the obvious connection. Boo Hewerdine does not take this obvious route and again in very distilled writing and atmospheric music tells an emotionally powerful story of life and death.
There is sadly only limited room in this review to cover a few of the songs in this carefully curated work of words and music, but here there are songs that will make you smile, laugh, cry, contemplate your own self and your place in the wider world. Here often are stories of everyday people. As they say, “everyone has their own story to tell”, and even if these are not in their own words, not their autobiographical stories, but re-imagined, you somehow still feel that their connection to you lives on and that through the words and music of Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine these images from the past and the people who put them in between the pages of these books are still speaking to us all down through the years.
“Things Found In Books” Track Listing
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Instead of being discarded (as many people would have done with them), these items had been carefully curated onto a display on this notice board.
It is, therefore, most appropriate that this album is packaged as a 64 page hardback book with the song lyrics printed next to the objects that inspired them. Ekphrastic writing like this is nothing new, often the source of inspiration is artwork in a gallery, but in the hands of writing talents like Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine something very special can happen and here it does as their words breathe a possible life into these forgotten pictures, letters and paper ephemera. Combining this writing with music that reflects these new stories behind these images is also a tribute to their skills as songwriters.
As human beings, we seem to have an ancient inbuilt instinct to tell stories about the people, landscapes and objects around us, and here a strange empathy with a physical item. Sometimes that will be a letter, a photograph, an object of clothing or something that has, like many of these items, been very personal to someone during their lifetime. We may not know, or may never even find out that connection to their original owner, but something inside of us still wants to imagine that we know, that somehow these long discarded objects are connecting to us, giving up their secrets.
Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine are two of the finest of contemporary songwriters, and each has their own very distinctive approach to both words and music. The title track of this album, “The Things You Find In Books” is classic Boo Hewerdine writing that is pared down to the essential words whilst giving enough information for us, the reader and listener, to start imagining for ourselves a far bigger story. Likewise, Boo’s “Marion and Sydney”, inspired by a photograph, gives a hint at a possible day in the life of two people that we never knew, but somehow feel that we now know so much about.
With “Salvador Dali and Me”, Yvonne Lyon takes this iconic artist and some of his most famous images as the inspiration for reflective memories. Taking a newspaper cut out asking where missing trees on Kate’s Avenue have gone, Yvonne creates an almost mystical character out of a woman called Kate, and it is a charming, heart-warming story of a person who perhaps knows some ancient knowledge that most of us have forgotten.
Sometimes there is a sharp sadness to these stories and “Navy Cut” by Boo Hewerdine is one of those. A less skilled writer would have taken the imagery of a packet of old Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes and made the obvious connection. Boo Hewerdine does not take this obvious route and again in very distilled writing and atmospheric music tells an emotionally powerful story of life and death.
There is sadly only limited room in this review to cover a few of the songs in this carefully curated work of words and music, but here there are songs that will make you smile, laugh, cry, contemplate your own self and your place in the wider world. Here often are stories of everyday people. As they say, “everyone has their own story to tell”, and even if these are not in their own words, not their autobiographical stories, but re-imagined, you somehow still feel that their connection to you lives on and that through the words and music of Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine these images from the past and the people who put them in between the pages of these books are still speaking to us all down through the years.
“Things Found In Books” Track Listing
- The Things You Find In Books
- Marion And Sydney
- Salvador Dali And Me
- Viennese Horses
- Down By The Harbour
- Cabbage White
- Navy Cut
- Baby Blue
- A Letter From The King
- Paul McCartney In 1970
- Montpellier
- Hieroglyphics
- Kate And The Missing Trees
- Waiting
- Hieroglyphics Reprise
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com