Album Review - Ali Whitton - Between the Forest and the Stars
Ali Whitton - Photo Credit Emily Raftery
Review By: Faith Hamblyn
Artist Name: Ali Whitton
Album Name: Between the Forest and the Stars
Label: AMW Music
Release Date: 16th April 2026
Ali Whitton - Between the Forest and the Stars
Ali Whitton - Photo Credit Emily Raftery
The cover art of Ali Whitton’s debut LP, Between the Forest and the Stars, by Patrick Atkins, has moonlit hills sloping down to a distant homestead, with the promise of a hearth and home. A figure is pictured, but it could just be one of the trees, part of a landscape with no other sign of humans; just one home, and a lighthouse on the back cover. Wind bends a tree, but light and hope are in the pinpricks of the stars, the lighthouse guarding the rough sea and the full moon watching over all. In the gatefold, someone is home, in hyggeligt golden light, almost within reach.
She’s Only Love opens the album, winsome, from the forest, with tussocks, horses and longing, a study of romantic idealism. It’s folk, with a vulnerable vocal and steel guitar with strings to evoke Americana and Britain, so that may be what makes it indie-folk. The ‘she’ of the song is a vision of always and all the uncertainty of forever. It’s fanciful and honest, and there’s a tension between idealism and doubt.
Whitton’s voice is weary like Neil Young, but his lyrics span the distance between uncertainty and optimism. Closer understands that while the road was rocky, it needed to be for things to work out. But that’s small consolation before the spooky Forever, with its unsettling imagery and breathless delivery. It makes the thought of dancing forever sound like a threat, like a spell cast. Reb Fountain promises forever in the backing vocals, like one of the belles that got caught by the faeries and who are now cursed to dance eternally.
Long Way Home closes the first side, and it’s the classic tale of unrequited love; a journey back home, alone. Reb’s backing vocals evoke Emmylou Harris, poignantly lonesome. We have cell phones to always be contactable, but that just makes being lost and alone even more pronounced. There’s regret with every step, and the song walks with us and our circling thoughts. No one wants to leave, but we cannot stay.
Patterns has a drumbeat like a Native American chant, like a prayer for something to go well this time. It’s a tale of cold, grim inevitability, and it’s resigned and determined that this time should be different. Romance Films is a rainy day, a slow dance, echoing John Lennon and his downtrodden poet’s point of view. It waltzes on, the way life does when we’re out of luck. There’s something English in this take on lost love – a wryness. ‘Romance films, you’ve got a lot to answer for.’
By Your Side could have been written by Leonard Cohen, if it’s not too bold to suggest that his ‘70s stuff could have been improved by a female backing vocalist. It lists what’s wonderful and what’s worrying, and how modern life needs love like a balm – a stripped-down guitar and confessional songwriting that also evokes early Simon and Garfunkel.
Hopeful Heart is a travelling, leaving-train-rhythm with a bit of fire and fight. Ali’s sworn enemy is his heart, and all trust between them has been lost. It’s cinematic-sounding, and it leaves it ambiguous whether he’s in league with himself or not – we’ll just have to see where the train ends up.
Closing track Quiet My Heart is contemplative. Comfort has been reached in this journey from the forest to the stars, if only for a moment in the chorus. The search for balance is always, and the extremes can be raucous or a whisper, and both are strengths. The common factor in the moods of this album is matters of the heart, and that’s something we all have in common.
Ali Whitton’s Between the Forest and the Stars is out now.
