Here Comes the Summer Playlist #2

Following on from our first Summer Playlist, here are four more artists brought to you by Flo at Angry Baby and this time it’s all about the girls – don’t forget to download your free music from Angry Baby at the bottom of this post.*

  • Kelly Oliver, Bedlam

Being a fearless storyteller is a great starting point for any contemporary folk singer. Add to that the creativity to build stand-out instrumentation topped by a voice that is uniquely sweet and complex and you have all the ingredients you need for a breakthrough folk album.  That’s what I found in Kelly Oliver’s Bedlam, released on boutique indie label Folkstock Records on 6 March 2016. It’s no surprise that she is already a favourite with the UK’s Folk Radio station and legendary music presenter Whispering Bob Harris.

  • Kiirstin Marilyn, Out of Control

At first listening, her new EP, Ghosts could be just another electro-pop offering. The vocals are sweet and tuneful, the arrangements energetic and the production tight. But it’s way too demanding to be background music or something to dance along to. This is a collection of songs that tap you on the shoulder. Think you might drift away? check your texts? tweet? Not while this music is playing, you won’t. It wants all of you and it accepts nothing less than your full attention.  It’s the voice that does it. Kiirstin may deliver a sweet vocal, but there is an urgency to her delivery too. An ‘I’m-singing-this’because-it-matters’. A ‘listen-up’. A ‘get-with-it’. Her activism occupies her tone and campaigns through her phrasing. This is a songbird for social justice. [love the intro to the music video. Jane]

  • Lorna Dea, Stay the Same

Sometimes all you need is pop. For just those moments, meet Lorna Dea. Bubbly and up-beat, Lorna’s sound channels all-time favourites from across the decades – The Supremes, Bananarama, The Bangles, The Spice Girls, Little Mix – into a one-woman girl-band.

  • Rachael Sage – English Tea

Rachael Sage is a singer songwriter whose music I’ve loved the for some time now, so I was thrilled when she agreed to do an interview. Her music is incredible, but I’ll let you see how she describes it in the piece below:

I first really started developing my style when I was a ballet student. I would come home from ballet class in my pre-teens and I would sound out all of this beautiful classical music by ear, and then in my own way I would kind of mash it up and I eventually started composing my own music. The first building block for me musically was definitely classical music, so there’s a lot of melody and a lot of arpeggiation in the piano. Then of course I absorbed just about everything I heard, from Top 40 in high school, to later on a lot of more organic folk music and socially conscious music that I heard in college. So it was a mix of influences. I do get compared a lot to songwriters from the seventies, and I always take that as a compliment because I really try to tell stories in my music.

 

Thanks to Flo at Angry Baby for sharing her music with us – I really loved the intro to Kiirstin Marilyn’s music video.  Also Rachael Sage is an artist featured on thoughtsofjustafan last year – love her music.

Click on the links below to get your free downloads from Angry Baby and add to your Summer playlist

Kelly Oliver – Bedlam

Kiirstin Marilyn – Out of Control

Lorna Dea – Stay the Same

Rachael Sage – English Tea

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