Steel & Velvet find beauty in stillness with “Orphan’s Lament”
With “Orphan’s Lament,” the Breton folk-rock group Steel & Velvet continue to prove that restraint can be just as powerful as grandeur. The track, which opens their People Just Float EP, is both a haunting reinterpretation and a reverent homage. It’s a reimagining of Robbie Basho’s 1978 composition that feels wholly their own. The result is a piece of music that sits somewhere between classical poise and raw emotional truth, capturing the timeless spirit of folk.
Formed in 2021 by longtime friends Johann Le Roux and Romuald Ballet-Baz (and later Jean-Alain Larreur), Steel & Velvet have been quietly redefining what minimalist folk can achieve. With Le Roux’s commanding, almost operatic vocals and Ballet-Baz’s intricate finger-picking, the duo strip away modern excess to reveal a sound rooted in authenticity. “Orphan’s Lament” embodies that ethos perfectly!
In this adaptation, Ballet-Baz’s guitar work replaces Basho’s original piano accompaniment, employing an acoustic guitar technique that honors the source material while adding new warmth and texture. His introduction, a lush gentle pentatonic scale, sets the tone for what follows. It’s a meditative journey that feels both ancient and immediate. The choice to transpose the song into a lower key grounds the track, infusing it with a modernity that pairs beautifully with Le Roux’s baritone. His voice is really the heart and soul of the song, but really it’s the atmospherics of it all that ties the piece together.
Every note lingers. Every silence matters. The interplay between voice and guitar feels less like performance and more like communion, like two musicians breathing the same sorrow and translating it into sound.
As the opening chapter of People Just Float, a dual release that includes both a six-track EP and a short film by Loïc Moyou, this song fully sets the stage for what promises to be an immersive artistic statement. In our current era that’s so obsessed with production polish, “Orphan’s Lament” dares to do the opposite. You can confidently prepare yourselves for a breathtaking, stripped-down piece that reaffirms Steel & Velvet’s place as one of folk’s most quietly powerful new voices.
We love this song and the beauty it’s given us! Go ahead and click those links below to listen in, follow along, and of course give the new EP a spin as well.
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