Ignore the fact that one of the stand out tracks on this album is called Summerland and you have the very essence of a wintry album. Sparse yet pretty, clear and crisp, The Woodlands sparkle like the frostiest of January mornings.

Nothing is rushed, nothing is overblown – it’s all very simplistic stuff, but very beautiful with it. Essentially the strummed musings of married couple Hannah and Samuel Robertson, the songs are added their frosty shimmer by sporadically dropping in strings, piano, accordion and glockenspiel overlaid with Hannah’s vocals which are not so much whispered as sighed. This is an album which demands that you listen to it with strained ears.

‘Such light shines so bright through the winter’ Hannah sings on the album’s closing track, neatly summing up the album’s contribution to the Suitcase Orchestra playlist over the last few weeks.

They have also done the Suitcase Orchestra Q & A, below, in which they give the best answer that anyone has ever, or will ever, give to the question What is the worst record in your collection?

If I were to play just one of your songs to someone who hasn’t heard your music, which would it be and why?

Hannah:  If only one, then Summerland.  The song came from a deep and beautiful well I found within myself.  It was like meeting a truer version of myself.  It tells of a land that I had dreamed of and longed for and found inside me all at the same time.  Beautiful and magical and enchanting!  It is both figurative and literal.  Summerland is probably my favourite song on the album.  I feel like after writing this song, something was solidified in my mind and I began to believe in myself as a songwriter and what Samuel and I were creating together.  It was a swirly, euphoric moment, and the song has always reminded me of it ever since.

Samuel:  Summerland is a good representation of a lot of the elements that show up in our songs on the album.  It has an innocent and untainted quality, without being naïve to the threads of darkness that run concurrently through the experience.  It has a quality of otherness.  Both mysterious and familiar.   It is a poetic song with images and melodies that continue to echo in your head long after listening.

You are being sent to the moon. You’re allowed to take 1 album. What is it?

Wow.  So much pressure.  Not only making all the necessary preparations for space travel to the moon (do they even have in-flight snacks anymore?), but also the tremendous pressure of choosing just one album?  An album that not only defies exclusion, but gravity as well?  At least we can choose two between us, and share them with each other when we get there.  So together we choose:

Seabear – The Ghost That Carried Us Away

MGMT  –  Oracular Spectacular

What was the last album you bought?

Hannah:  Au Revoir Simone – Still Night, Still Light

Samuel:   Florence & The Machine – Lungs

Tell us an interesting fact.

If you mean an interesting fact in general:  More children, women and men are held in slavery right now than over the course of the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade (International Justice Mission).

If you mean an interesting fact about us:  We both speak Spanish.

If you mean an interesting fact about our music:  We have two songs (Until The Day Dims and Day To Day) featured in a newly released international feature film from Greenland called Nuummioq that makes its world premier at the Sundance Film Festival and then off to more of the international festival circuit.  We are excited.

Tell us about a band or singer we might not have heard of who should be featured on Suitcase Orchestra.

Folded Light

Catherine Feeny

Horse In The Sea

What film would you be a character in?

Hannah:  Chocolat

Samuel:   Hawaii, Oslo

Recommend a book.

Hannah: The Great Divorce – C.S. Lewis

Samuel: The History Of Love – Nicole Krauss

What’s the worst record in your collection?

Samuel:  In ninth grade my friend Ben Merris and I joined together as a doubles tennis team, mostly as a joke because neither of us had played tennis before.  Our record during the regular season was 0-9.  That’s zero wins and nine losses.  As in, we lost every single match.  At the end of the season, every team from every school in the city was allowed to participate in the city tournament.  The big dance.  Shockingly enough, we won our first match.  Shock upon shock, we won our next match.  Inexplicably, and to the utter astonishment of every soul in sight, we won the next as well.

A gradual buzz began to build around the tournament that some miscreant loser doubles team was slicing through the competition and steadily advancing.  We were those miscreants.  Tennis miscreants on fire.  Our miraculous ascent through the junior high pantheon of tennis elites simply could not be foiled.  Something just happened, some mistroke of fortune or stroke of misfortune, and we were hurled through the tournament brackets with our rackets blazing and our eyes gazing incredulously ahead at the little plastic tennis-man coated with a gold glaze that sat atop a faux-marble base with a little brass placard awaiting the engraving of the tournament winners’ names.  Our names.

We marched through five straight glorious matches to get to the championship, where we fought a close and embittered battle and seized a well-undeserved victory.  With upturned hands and brows, with murmurs and grumblings from astounded and unquestionably higher calibre opponents, and with a euphoric disbelief at the feat we had accomplished, Ben and I walked through a shower of applause that swelled from hesitation to elation as we claimed our trophy that decreed the worst and best record of our lives.

What question should I always ask in a Q & A? And answer it please.

What do you enjoy in life outside of music?

Hiking through Forest Park in the Portland hills.  Making our own kombucha tea.  We love watching foreign films at home, finding affordable happy hour food specials, laughing ridiculously with friends, visiting family, travelling to new places with new adventures, inventing recipes, brainstorming art ideas, eating olives, browsing second-hand stores, showering together at night, talking about Europe, make fun of each other’s quirks, hoping.

The Woodlands can be found here.