singer-songwriter
SEE: Ailsa Tully – ‘Parasite’: a bass-led tune with masked lyrical steel
HAILING from Welsh border country, Ailsa Tully is a singer-songwriter whose instrument of choice, the bass, brings a new slant to the crowded sphere of singer-songwriting. We fell pretty hard for her first single for Dalliance Recordings, “Drive”, back around Hallowe’en, noting that bass-led thing it possesses evoked “… a sweeter Breeders … her bass …
NEWS: Cheval Sombre announces February album for Sonic Cathedral
CHRIS PORPORA makes very, very beautiful and hushed music as Cheval Sombre – and makes it very much at his own pace; he is, as we shall see, very much concerned with the passage of time and all its tricks in the human brain. And he’s just announced the release of a new album, Time …
Lizzie Reid – ‘Been Thinking About You’: jazzy swing with real heart, soul and devil-may-care
LIZZIE REID, the young Glaswegian songwriter who is a massive, massive new talent – no dissent now at the back, this is just how it is – has been melting hearts at Backseat Mafia over the past few months as she’s hashed out a little trail of candid and heartfelt tunesmithery en route to her …
SEE: John Smith – ‘Friends’: honey-voiced folk salutes those dear to us
A SIMPLE name, perhaps, but far from simple tunesmithery: John Smith is coming into 2021 with positivity and a grab-bag of songs to beguile you. Essex born but raised on the Devon coast, he’s earned his crust previously as a session musician, lending his chops and precision to bigger names across the globe, such as …
TRACK: Strictly Elizabeth announces her Full Moon series with a versioning of ‘Dogs And Traps’
STRICTLY ELIZABETH has announced a new series of calendrical song drops to take us all the way through 2021 in lunar company, as she launches her Full Moon Series with a new, stripped down take on her own “Dogs And Traps”, to begin the welcoming back of the sun in tiny increments after the darkest …
SEE: The video for the souljazz noir of Madison McFerrin’s ‘Hindsight’
COOL-AS Brooklyn imprint Mexican Summer, which has played host to artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never and Best Coast, has been running a lovely diversion from all the nutsness this year entitled Looking Glass, being an ongoing series of digital singles drops from its fine stable; already during 2020 we’ve had selections from Ariel Pink, …
TRACK: Kathryn Williams & Carol Ann Duffy – ‘Snow Angel’: collaborative Christmas sweetness
THE MERCURY-nominated Liverpudlian singer-songwriter who’s dear to our hearts, Kathryn Williams, has teamed up with poet and playwright Carol Ann Duffy for a two-handed seasonal single, “Snow Angel”, out now on One Little Independent Records. It’s got Kathryn’s breathy, light vocal touch, and focuses on that casting back to Christmases past that we all do …
Willie J Healey – ‘Merry Christmas’: seasonal songcraft to end the year
OXFORDSHIRE songsmith and former amateur boxing champion Willie J Healey is finishing a year of deserved musical resurgence on a seasonal note, as he drops the classicism of “Merry Christmas” for us to raid the selection box to with a wee refresher. Watch below. Willie first glided into our minds back in 2017 when, after …
SEE: Arlo Parks – ‘Caroline’: extra UK dates for next summer
MAY WE talk of one of the artists to properly keep an eye on in ’21? We may? Excellent. Arlo Parks grew up in South-West London, a self-confessed tomboy, super-sensitive, who sums her teenage self up as “a black kid who can’t dance for shit, listens to emo music and currently has a crush on …
SEE: Cheval Sombre returns with the hazy hush of ‘It’s Not Time’
HE’S BEEN away from our ears as a solo artist for what? Crikey it’s actually eight years now, how the egg-timer sands run; but Chris Porpora, who guises up for the world of music as Cheval Sombre, has come ambling in at the absolute final knockings of the year with a leaf-skeleton of absolute delicacy …