Welcome to the Scotsman Sessions, a series of short video performances from artists all around the country introduced by our critics. This week, singer-songwriter Siobhan Wilson performs Sunflowers Again from her new EP Flowercore Vol.2

For her latest project Flowercore, which takes the form of three EPs released throughout this year (the second arrives this week), singer-songwriter Siobhan Wilson has literally been getting out and smelling the flowers. On the first two volumes she sings of snowdrops, clovers, ghost pipe flowers, ferns, bleeding hearts, daffodils, primroses, cherry blossom and sunflowers – the latter on Sunflowers Again, performed here as a Scotsman Session.

“Sometimes I'm really inspired by the form and the shape and the colour of the flower itself,” she says. “I draw them, studying them so I feel I get to know them. Other songs are memories associated with the flowers, just that feeling when you're walking in nature and it evokes a strong sense of nostalgia.”

Nature has become more apparent to Wilson since she got out of the cities of the Central Belt (she’s lived between Edinburgh and Glasgow for most of her career) and moved to the village of Coldstream in the Borders. “I spend a lot of time outside with my dog,” she says. “It's peaceful here, we take walks along the river Tweed and in the woodland. I guess you could describe it as a slower pace of life, but actually it feels more exciting. There's so much vibrancy in nature, it’s more stimulating to me right now than a busy city street.”

Her dog, a Jack Russell named McTavish, appears in her Scotsman Session. “He notices things at ground level that I think I've spent most my life ignoring,” says Wilson. “I vicariously discover the little things thanks to him, he stops to sniff things out and it makes me stop as well. I got a flower app on my phone and it all spiralled from there.”

Wilson says she’s in Coldstream because she was priced out of the city during lockdown. “There’s a great music community all over Scotland, but live music is centralised in the two main cities, and rent has become unaffordable there for a lot of people,” she says. “Actually, what's happening is that prices are hiking up around here as well. Landlords are selling flats because they're going for a high price.

“I don’t mind talking about this, because it’s really important for people in Scotland to realise the arts are being defunded in several ways – but it's also optimistic to talk about it, because it shouldn't be a taboo. Scottish culture should be democratised and accessible to everyone, and I think we’re a cool country in the sense that we’ll group together and find solutions to our problems.”

If her current preoccupations sound off-grid, they’re offset by the fact Wilson, a self-confessed “nerd”, also composes music for video games. She recently travelled to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, where a song she wrote for the video game Planet of Lana was nominated for an award, and she also got to ride in a self-driving taxi.

“It was like a transhuman experience,” she says. “We’re on the cusp of a tech revolution, aren’t we? Or it’s already happening and we’re in the thick of it. That’s why I feel it’s been so cool to stay connected to nature, to have a much deeper appreciation of what’s already there.”

Flowercore Vol.2 is released on 24 May on Olive Grove Records, and Siobhan Wilson plays the Glad Café, Glasgow on the same evening. Vol.1 is out now on the same label and Vol.3 is due in the autumn. See www.siobhan-wilson.com and www.olivegroverecords.com

The Scotsman Sessions #410: Siobhan Wilson