In the quiet corners of Culzean Castle’s second-hand bookshop, between the yellowed pages of discarded novels and well-loved poetry collections, lie the ghosts of ordinary lives—lost notes, faded photographs, forgotten receipts, and love letters left behind like whispers in the margins. It is these fragile, fleeting traces of human connection that inspire Things Found In Books, the new album from Scottish singer-songwriter Yvonne Lyon and Ivor Novello-nominated English troubadour Boo Hewerdine. Released on March 7, 2025, this 15-track collection of songs is less a traditional album and more a lyrical scrapbook—a patchwork of imagined lives stitched together with exquisite craftsmanship and aching empathy.
The concept alone is enough to stir the heart: a noticeboard in a coastal Scottish bookshop, pinned with the detritus of strangers’ lives—a postcard from a seaside holiday, a grocery list from decades past, a photograph of faces no one can name. Lyon and Hewerdine have woven these fragments into songs that feel both intimately personal and universally resonant. There’s a quiet magic in how they transform the mundane into the monumental, spinning gossamer melodies around the kind of moments most of us overlook.
Lyon’s voice—clear as a Highland stream, capable of both fragility and fierce warmth—pairs perfectly with Hewerdine’s weathered, storytelling baritone. Their harmonies feel lived-in, as though these songs have always existed, half-remembered, in the back of the listener’s mind. The arrangements are spare yet rich, with acoustic guitars, piano, and the occasional swell of strings allowing the lyrics to take center stage.
Hewerdine, best known for penning Eddi Reader’s 1995 hit “Patience of Angels”, brings his knack for melodic immediacy and lyrical precision, while Lyon—a masterful songwriter in her own right—contributes a poet’s eye for detail and emotional depth. Together, they avoid sentimentality, instead finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Take, for example, a song inspired by a crumpled train ticket tucked into a novel—perhaps a keepsake from a long-ago journey. In Lyon and Hewerdine’s hands, it becomes a meditation on time, distance, and the things we carry with us. Another track, born from a faded grocery list, might unfold into a bittersweet snapshot of domestic life, a love letter to the everyday.
The care taken in the album’s creation extends to its physical release—a bespoke hardback CD book, designed to evoke the very objects that inspired it. It’s a fitting tribute to the materiality of memory, to the tactile pleasure of holding something precious in your hands. Things Found In Books is a love letter to the fragments we leave behind—and the stories they tell when someone cares enough to listen.
