Cambridge’s psych-folk quintet Fuzzy Lights return with their fifth album Fen Creatures, set for release on 7th November 2025 via Meadows.
Following 2021’s critically lauded album, Burials, the band have created their most conceptually ambitious work to date – a meditation on environmental crisis that uses the folklore and history of East Anglia as a lens to examine humanity’s fractured relationship with the natural world.
Where Burials explored personal trauma and environmental collapse, Fen Creatures expands this vision into something far more sweeping and interconnected. The album operates across multiple historical timelines, from Iron Age hill forts to medieval plague houses, from Byron’s Romantic-era environmental warnings to the immediate threat of rising sea levels, creating a temporal tapestry that weaves ancient stories with contemporary concerns.
“In the world we live, with the challenges of environmental devastation and change, it’s really important to reconnect to our history and the land around us,” explains vocalist Rachel Watkins. “We need to learn lessons from the past and try to live with the landscape rather than changing it to fit our needs. The album calls attention to environmental change while exploring how folklore ties to the landscape and our connection to our ancestors.”
Musically, the quintet, Rachel Watkins (vocals/violin), Xavier Watkins (guitar/electronics), Chris Rogers (guitar), Daniel Carney (bass), and Mark Blay (drums), have pushed deeper into experimental drone territories while maintaining the crystalline folk sensibilities that have become their signature. The result is their most atmospheric and immersive work to date, with vast sonic landscapes that mirror the fenland geography they’re documenting.
The album’s opening statement, “Greenteeth”, transforms the traditional cautionary tale of Jenny Greenteeth, the water spirit who lures children to their deaths. “When I read this story to my daughter, she was instantly drawn into it,” Watkins notes. “There’s something timeless about these tales and the way they speak to fundamental fears and connections that span generations.”
Elsewhere, “War Ditches” imagines the Iron Age dead of a Cambridge hill fort keeping watch over the land, their vigil ending as modern people lose connection with the earth. “The Promise” creates an imaginary encounter with the ghosts of Landbeach village across multiple eras, connecting the 1665 plague with our recent pandemic experience through shared narratives of community resilience and loss.
The album’s most pointed environmental statement comes with “Another Eden”, inspired by Byron’s poem ‘Darkness’ and its prescient environmental warnings. “I was struck by how Byron was writing about humanity’s impact on the environment even then,” Watkins explains.
“This is our fire and brimstone telling of the climate crisis, our sceptred isle that we claim to love, yet our attitudes of greed and consumption mean destruction is secondary to our wants.” The closing track “Descent” confronts the melting ice caps and the rising seas, looking east across the fens with the mixture of beauty and unease that recalls the best of British folk’s tradition of using regional landscape to explore deeper themes.
Fen Creatures promises to cement Fuzzy Lights’ reputation as one of Britain’s most vital contemporary folk acts. The album positions them firmly within the lineage of artists like Fairport Convention, Trees, and Comus who understood that engaging with tradition isn’t nostalgic escapism, but a way of accessing older wisdoms about how to live in the world.
The fenlands have always felt like a place where time moves differently, there’s something about the flatness, the way sound carries across the water, that makes you feel connected to all the voices that have passed through these landscapes. Fen Creatures is an invitation to reflect on our place within the natural world, to learn from the past, and to act decisively for a sustainable future.
