📷 Photo by Nicky Murray

A few years have passed since the release of my debut EP, In My Mind. In that time, I have had the opportunity to perform, tour and develop a greater sense confidence in my own sound. It felt like the right moment to take the next step and create my first full length album.

Mo Thìr | My Land is a collection of songs that have shaped me as a singer and through the process of making the album connected me even more deeply with my native home of Islay.

The Inspiration

This album is inspired by Islay, my musical journey so far, and the people and stories that have shaped me. I feel incredibly lucky to have grown up in such a beautiful place with such a strong cultural identity. As a Gaelic singer, Islay has always been at the centre of my art, and I knew that it would play a prominent role in this recording.

Most of the songs on the album are either from Islay or have a strong connection to the island. Alongside these traditional songs are two pieces that I composed myself, as well as a couple of songs that have become connected to particular moments in my life over the past few years.

Since leaving Islay, I think I have become even more conscious of how important the island is to my sense of identity. Being away from home has made me reflect more deeply on the place I grew up, the language I heard around me and the songs and stories that were passed down through the community. In many ways, making this album has been a way of returning home – not physically, but through music.

The Songs

The songs on the album came to me in a number of different ways. Some of the traditional Islay songs are ones I grew up hearing and singing, passed on to me by people within the local community. Others I learned during my time at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where I focused my final year of study on the songs of Islay and the island’s Gaelic dialect.

I wanted the album to reflect that mixture of personal experience, community tradition and my own development as a singer. Songs that I have carried with me since childhood feature alongside songs that I have discovered and explored more recently. There are also two original pieces on the album, Èirinn and Starlings, both of which are deeply rooted in my own connection to Islay and its people.

Èirinn was born from the words of Islay bard William Livingston (1808–1870). Livingston was a strong nationalist and his writing was often political, advocating strongly for the Gaelic language. He also had a great empathy for the Irish people, something which is particularly evident in this piece. His words recall stories he had heard of heroic Irish Gaels and question where such figures were during the devastating famine. I felt a very personal connection to Livingston too as he lived in the same house where my granny grew up. I took his words and created a melody for them, hoping to reflect the heartbreak, frustration and empathy contained within his writing.

Starlings, meanwhile, is a song I wrote for my granny and grandpa, who are sadly no longer with us. It tells of their own love story. When my granny left Islay for a period to work on the mainland as a nanny, the two of them promised to write to each other. As time passed no letters were received and they both assumed that their relationship had been lost. When my granny eventually returned home to Islay, they discovered that my grandpa’s mother had been destroying the letters written between them. They rekindled their love and went on to have a happy life together. My grandparents were such a prominent part of my childhood on Islay and writing Starlings became a way of preserving a small part of their story and my memories of them.

Throughout the album there are recurring themes of love, loss, emigration and belonging. Stories of sailors lost at sea, lovers separated by distance and people forced to leave their homes. Although many of these songs come from a different time, the emotions and experiences within them remain deeply familiar today.

Bringing the Songs to Life

I feel incredibly lucky to regularly perform alongside Sean Gray on guitar and Isla Callister on fiddle. Together, we have developed the sound that audiences hear when they come to one of my gigs, and I am grateful to have had them by my side both on stage and throughout the arranging process for this album.

Once I had settled on the songs and the atmosphere I wanted to create for each one, we spent around six months working through the material together. We explored each song in depth, looking for ways to arrange them that felt fresh and exciting while remaining sympathetic to their origins. For us, the words and the stories had to remain at the heart of the music. We wanted to create arrangements that allowed those stories to hold the spotlight, while also making the sound feel like an authentic reflection of ourselves as musicians. The resulting album moves between fun, upbeat rhythmic numbers and much more stripped back arrangements that allow the emotional weight of the songs to shine through.

In the Studio

The album was produced by the amazingly talented John Lowrie. It was a real pleasure to work with him to further develop our arrangements and establish a definitive sound for the album. We recorded over three weeks at Solas Sound with Gus Stirrat, and it was a joy to have everyone together in the studio, bouncing ideas off one another and allowing the arrangements to develop organically.

Adding to the sound of the album were Ewan Baird on bodhrán and Charlie Stewart on bass, while John also contributed piano, percussion… and pretty much anything else he could get his hands on!! Each musician brought something different to the recordings, helping us to build a sound that felt both rooted in the tradition and representative of where I am as a musician now.

I was also incredibly grateful to have the wonderful Gaelic singer Kathleen MacInnes join me as a guest vocalist. Kathleen has long been one of my favourite singers so having her voice on the album was particularly special. She features on Ceann Tràigh Ghruinneart, a haunting lament for Sir Lachlan Maclean, who died on Islay during Blàr Tràigh Ghruinneart while fighting to take the land from the MacDonalds. Bringing our voices together on this
song created what I hope is one of the most poignant moments on the album.

Language, Community and Continuity

One of the things that became increasingly important to me throughout the making of Mo Thìr was the idea of passing things on. I grew up with only one parent who spoke Gaelic and I am very conscious of the potential loss of Islay’s local dialect. The island has its own particular relationship with the Gaelic language, and the songs contained within this album are part of that cultural inheritance.

Recording them has made me more aware of the responsibility I feel to continue learning, improving my own Gaelic confidence and knowledge and hopefully contributing in some small way to keeping these songs, stories and language alive.

For me, traditional music is not something fixed in the past. It is something that is continually carried forward, evolving with each generation. We inherit songs from the people who came before us, but we also interpret them, arrange them, sing them and give them new life. I hope Mo Thìr can be part of that.

The Visuals

I wanted the album’s visuals to feel raw, delicate and closely connected to the beauty of nature. Film photography felt like a natural way to capture that. I worked with Nicky Murray to create a series of photographs that reflect the atmosphere of the album. These images feature throughout the album artwork and accompanying media.

The artwork was then brought together by Pearse at WiseLove Studio, who created a beautifully simple and effortless flow across the album packaging. I wanted the visual identity to reflect the intimacy of the songs and the connection to the landscape.

What’s to Come

Over the past few years I have felt incredibly lucky to tour and perform at festivals both here in Scotland and abroad. I genuinely feel privileged to be able to call performing my job, and I hope that this new album will allow me to continue sharing my music, culture and stories with a wide range of audiences.

📷 Mairi McGillivray Trio @ Celtic Connections (photo by Kris Kesiak)

One of the things I love most about Gaelic music is its ability to communicate emotion even when the listener doesn’t understand every word. I hope Mo Thìr can connect with Gaelic speakers and non-Gaelic speakers alike and perhaps encourage people to think about their own relationship with home, language, family and belonging.

With the busy schedules of everyone involved, we will be waiting a few months before bringing the album together as a full live show. I am really looking forward to getting back together with the musicians and creating a performance that can capture the atmosphere and beauty of the album – so keep an eye out!!

CDs and downloads of Mo Thìr are available through Bandcamp, and the album is also available on the usual streaming and digital platforms.

It is a privilege to share these songs and stories, and to add my own voice to the rich tradition from which they come. Mo Thìr has given me an opportunity to look back at where I come from, to celebrate the people and places that shaped me, and to think about how I can carry those things forward. I hope that while listening you can find something of your own sense of home and belonging within these songs.