viernes, 3 de julio de 2015

SOAK¡¡¡

Soak performing 'Fingers Crossed' live at the Cellar Bar, Draperstown.

lunes, 25 de mayo de 2015

Sunday 24 May 2015In New Music We Trust stage

Young, Gifted and Damp

If it feels like people have been tipping SOAK—known to her family as Bridie Monds-Watson—as someone to watch for a long time, that’s because her peculiar talents were entirely apparent from a preposterously young age. She first started turning heads in her native Derry-Londonderry at the age of 14, and was quickly spotted by BBC Foyle, BBC Northern Ireland and BBC Introducing, all entranced by her mature ability to weave translucent tales from her personal life and set them to a gently plucked guitar.

Zane Lowe soon became very interested, especially after she released 2014’s Blud EP on Goodbye Records (the label run by Chvrches), for which she played all the instruments, and a she delighted a home crowd for BBC Introducing at the Derry-Londonderry Big Weekend in 2013. She then reached the final 15 in the BBC Sound of 2015 poll, toured with George Ezra, and signed an album deal with Rough Trade records. And then there was Sea Creatures, a song she’d be playing almost since the start, and her first to make the Radio 1 A List, swiftly followed by her remarkable Live Lounge cover of Drown by Bring Me The Horizon. And she's STILL only 18.

First Listen: SOAK, 'Before We Forgot How To Dream'

The first words Bridie Monds-Watson sings on her debut album double as a tidy thesis statement: "A teenage heart is an unguided dart." The Irish singer-songwriter, who records under the name SOAK, made Before We Forgot How To Dream while she was still 18 — some of these songs date back to her early teens — so she knows whereof she speaks.

This is, to state the obvious, a coming-of-age album, as Monds-Watson chronicles youthful alienation ("Sea Creatures"), anxiety and shyness ("B a nobody"), and the anguish of her parents' divorce ("Blud") alongside more generalized ruminations on feeling ill-at-ease and at a crossroads. She sings and writes as if she's spent much of her life living inside her own head, and yet there's also an ambitious, idiosyncratic quality to Before We Forgot How To Dream that allows it to feel more sweeping in scope. At times, SOAK's origins feel more Icelandic than Irish, as Monds-Watson achieves Bjork-like otherworldliness even as her subject matter fixes on the anguish of the everyday.

SOAK's debut rarely amplifies Monds-Watson's sound beyond lugubrious seething, and even when it picks up the pace, as in "Garden," the feeling throughout is sort of calmly unsettled — or, in the case of "Shuvels," outright haunted. But don't let Monds-Watson's still, unassuming demeanor throw you off: These songs command attention by burrowing deep under the skin, where they can't be dug out so easily.

Big thanks to BBC Radio 1 for having me at #BigWeekend yesterday! Massive thanks to everyone that came to see me.

You can see my full performance over on iplayer