Rather than bucolic depictions of the countryside, the London-based Avice Caro (Maria Dearest) makes folk music that draws on fairytales and the strange folklore of the British Isles. Think stories of seagulls with mischievous smiles and 17th-century tales of lost love, sung in melodies that twist like creeping vines. Recorded on a 1940s ribbon microphone straight to tape, her beautifully homespun album Home Demos sounds as if it has been plucked from the annals of Weird Britannia. Recently, the artist spoke to me about the transformative nature of folk music, her temperamental recording equipment, and a 1998 film about a talking pig in New York. Read the interview, and listen to Home Demos, below.

I’ve heard you are a big fan of the film Babe: Pig in the City (1998). 

Avice Caro: First of all a talking pig—just off the bat that is a crazy premise! Babe the pig goes to New York and it’s really scary, it reminds me a bit of Megalopolis actually—there’s like a poodle playing a prostitute. The film was marketed towards children but apparently all the kids who went to see it left halfway through screaming and crying and the parents were really disturbed as well. It was a blockbuster failure directed by George Miller (Mad Max), but it really moves you. It's funny, scary, sad, uncanny. It’s … a masterpiece. 

Why do you think you’re drawn to fairytales?

I have always been drawn to animals and the supernatural. Life is full of surprises that shock and terrify you, and music and stories are a way to make sense of all the weird things that happen. When I was a kid my parents told me these Slavic fairy tales and folk stories before bed, and there are so many scary stories about women living in houses with chicken legs. So to me that was normal, but I worked as a nanny for a bit and whenever I told these stories the children would just burst into tears. I think it’s about making light out of darkness. 

What is the relationship between fairytales and folk music? 

I love tales of transformation and metamorphosis and folk music is strangely mythical, like the song “Polly Vaughn,” about a man who shoots a bird who turns out to be his sweetheart in disguise. English folk music became a bridge between the Slavic fairytales my father would tell me and an English heritage. When I discovered Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch, Shirley Collins, that music took me back to a place when I was a little girl—the songs were so colourful, the characters were so alive. I also found singers like Shirley Collins fascinating as an archive of oral storytelling traditions. I love the Appalachian folk songs and they are all old English and Irish ballads that travelled over in the 1800s, like “Silver Dagger” is considered an Appalachian folk song but its roots are a Scottish ballad. These songs have been re-written depending on where they travelled or who sang them—so the idea of transformation is always present in folk music.

How does this tradition manifest in Home Demos? 

Songs like “The Wishing Tree” and “Mine Own” were written for my EP Myth Weaving from 2022 and my guitarist Alfie Jones re-wrote the guitar arrangement into different versions. “Lowlands” is a traditional Scottish folk song from the 1600s which there are hundreds of versions of, but I love Anne Briggs' version which is completely unaccompanied. I removed a verse which introduces other characters, because I wanted it to be a story about a woman who is sad her true love has gone off to war and died on a ship and wants to join him. The last song, “Bird Song,” is completely acapella, inspired by the oral storytelling of folk songs. 

Home Demos was recorded straight to tape with a 1940s microphone. Why did you feel that was the right format?

Tape is cosy and warm, it sounds like being sat by a fireplace hearing the crackle of the fire. I love those 1940s recordings of Lead Belly songs or 1950s Shirley Collins, Molly Drake, and Connie Converse. I love how deteriorated and imperfect the recordings are, you can hear the tape hissing in your ear, it feels like you’re in the room with them. I’m drawn to that intimate lo-fi sound. I love how the room is very much present in the recordings of Home Demos, you can’t ensure the recording variables are all the same as in a studio, so the album feels like a patchwork quilt since all the recordings sound a bit different. We made a mic stand out of books, but every time Alfie needed a book he would remove it and the recordings would sound different. 

The ribbon mic was so old it didn’t have a jack. Alfie had to build a special box that connected the mic to the tape recorder. Whenever we did a take and thought it was perfect, we would listen to it back but then the tape machine would overheat and die, or eat it up and we’d have to do it again. We would have re-recorded parts if we had the capacity, but we were scared the tape machine wouldn’t be able to complete the project so we left the imperfections in there—otherwise this project would never exist.

It sounds like the tape recorder was the third member. 

Yeah exactly, it was like a living being! It would get tired and angry, I developed a connection to this machine as if it were a living thing. Every day was different. Some days it wouldn’t want to do anything. It definitely had a mind of its own.

Is there a folk scene in London that you feel part of? 

There are bands like Shovel Dance Collective and Broadside Hacks whose founder Campbell Baum now promotes these talks and events which have become a way to connect the younger folk world with the older folk world, a lot of old people go but there are also young people covering Michael Hurley and Bob Dylan songs. I actually met Alfie at a commemoration of Jacqui Mcshee from Pentangle. London is a wonderful place for music. What’s special about London is how connected musicians from different genres are. If you are a folk musician you are not just thinking about trad folk but about electronic and rock music, you participate in a scene where everyone is welcome and willing to collaborate. 

You mentioned your Latvian heritage. Can you name some of your favourite Latvian superstitions?

Don't give someone a knife because they will stab you in the back, so you have to gift them a coin too. If you hug someone over the threshold of a door, you will have a huge argument and never be friends. If you give your lover a pair of shoes they will walk away from you. If you’re leaving your house and forget something, that is a demon trying to take your soul away from you so don’t go back to get it unless you look in a mirror and spit in your hand three times to break the curse. If a bird flies into your house—you’re gonna die. You’re looking at me like I’m crazy.

No, but a bird did fly into my house not too long ago. 

Oh no, I’m so sorry but that is really bad news…