for you who are the wronged Kathryn Joseph

• 1 what is keeping you alive makes me want to kill them for 05:23
• 2 the burning of us all 05:04
• 3 only the sound of the sea would save them 05:08
• 4 how well you are 03:15
• 5 until the truth of you 02:40
• 6 the harmed 02:43
• 7 bring to me your open wounds 02:06
• 8 flesh and blood 03:40
• 9 of all the broken 05:03
• 10 for you who are the wronged 03:17
• 11 long gone 02:17
• Total Runtime 40:36

Info for for you who are the wronged

"for you who are the wronged" is the much anticipated follow-up to 2018’s "from when i wake the want is", and her 2014 debut "bones you have thrown me and blood i’ve spilled", which won 2015’s Scottish Album of the Year award.

Recorded at The Lengths Studio in Fort William, with producer Lomond Campbell, the converted old school-house offered a week-long solace to let her focus solely on the music. It’s her first co-production credit, too – and given the heart-close nature of the subject, only fitting that she’d shape its execution. The sound is spacious, honouring the rawness of her original demos, written in early 2020. The subject matter is violation – of power, of love, of access – a pain that may not belong to her alone, but she strives to make sense of what’s being enacted on others. In crafting these songs, Joseph offers a window into these toxic patterns that she hopes could save someone.

"I wanted this record to be a completely different feeling and sound,” says Kathryn Joseph, of ‘For You Who Are The Wronged’, the follow-up to 2018’s ‘From When I Wake The Want Is’. Her first release since the standalone single ‘Whole’, it’s a much-anticipated return.

Unspoken truths take flight in songs that simmer and seethe with quiet anger, as Joseph gives voice to those robbed of their own. This record is a statement of abuse observed; its narrative woven with pain’s complexities, futility and stasis. If ‘From When I Wake…’ was written for love to return, this is where she fights tooth and claw to protect it. And though her sparrow-boned musical structures are as slight and sparse framed as their singer, they burn with a fearsome new certainty.

Her debut, ‘Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled’, won 2015’s Scottish Album of the Year award. An uncompromising gut-punch that grieved aloud, she mourned passing relationships and, with unimaginable courage, the loss of her son. This possession with truth-telling is her hallmark, digging straight for the heart. Originally from Inverness, she was a child happiest outside and never afraid of the dark. Though she hadn’t written before songwriting and her debut was released years after the songs were finished, her lyrics are steeped in the magical, creepy shadows of her youth.

Though lockdown temporarily stopped her writing, (“I thought I’m never going to write another song again…I didn’t really know if I cared or not”), she shook off her sadness by cycling to the sea, and soon, ideas came spilling out. “It was just the oddness of how fast they came too…I was feeling in control, and like I could stick to something.” Recorded at The Lengths Studio in Fort William, with producer Lomond Campbell, the converted old school-house offered a week-long solace to let her focus solely on the music.

“It’s the first time I've done it that way - I didn't have to think about anything but making a record,” she says. “Both the others, we'd recorded over two days and that was it. There was time to feel like I could enjoy it, and get into it more.” It’s her first co-production credit, too - and given the heart-close nature of the subject, only fitting that she’d shape its execution. The sound is spacious, honouring the rawness of her original demos, written in early 2020. Opener ‘What is keeping you alive makes me want to kill them for’ sees her swapping her signature piano for keyboard. “There's something nice about it being this new noise,” she says. “It's all pretty sparse…I can hear the click of the keys. It's become something small. But raging.”

Intuition led her to other musical shifts: namely, in her own vocals. “When I made a noise, I thought ‘this is what this song wants to sound like’. My voice is different on this too. The way I’d been singing had changed. Part of me thought I didn’t even know how to sing anymore. That felt really uncomfortable, but it was the way it wanted to come out.”

Kathryn Joseph

Kathryn Joseph
Indie folk singer-songwriter Kathryn Joseph’s debut, bones you have thrown me and blood I’ve spilled won Scottish Album of the Year in 2015. The Inverness-born artist creates dreamy melodies, transporting listeners with beguiling soundscapes of piano, harmonium and voice; a visceral, often melancholy blend of poetry and wistful refrains. Hers is a delicate, otherworldly sound, drawing comparisons to Joanna Newsom, Kate Bush or Anohni while remaining utterly unique and conjuring up cinematic visions of Scottish landscapes and raw emotions.

Besides her solo work, Joseph has featured on an album by virtuoso guitarist RM Hubbert, written a soundtrack for a National Theatre of Scotland play and collaborated with James Graham of post-punk band The Twilight Sad on Out Lines, a community storytelling programme in Glasgow’s Easterhouse. Open to exploring other artforms beside music, Joseph also toured a poignantly staged, live theatrical adaptation of her 2018 second album, from when i wake the want is.

"...Kathryn Joseph continues to excel at both the light and the dark without ever being grey" (The Skinny)

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