Ruth Lyon conjures haunting reflection on betrayal with new single ‘Wickerman’
Ruth Lyon image via Tash Barker
Newcastle singer-songwriter Ruth Lyon returns with ‘Wickerman,’ a meditation on resilience and renewal. Produced by John Parish (Aldous Harding, PJ Harvey), the single marks her first release since 2022’s Direct Debit To Vogue.
‘Wickerman’ is a deeply atmospheric piece, blending Lyon’s evocative folk storytelling with rich instrumental textures. Dreamy clarinet and melancholic strings swirl atop a mesmeric piano-and-bass groove. The track captures the sensation of unearthing painful truths and finding solace in time and nature, its soundscape both weighty and luminous. Accompanying the single is a transfixing video directed by Sel MacLean, featuring haunting imagery that reinforces the song’s themes of transformation and self-reckoning.
Reflecting on the track, Lyon shares:
“‘Wickerman’ lives in the borders between lucid dreaming and painful reality and I wrote this at a time I found myself alone yet haunted. The iconography of the burning wickerman evokes the chasing away of winter through fire and ceremony, welcoming the Spring; a re-seeding of soul into new light. Unravelling life changes can be disorientating, kicking up heavy questions to ask and the only answers I found were in time, nature, and spirit. I wanted to be remembered and more importantly to remember myself.”
‘Wickerman’ is out now.
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