I have wanted to make playlists for this blog for ages, and this morning I was having a read around Skeletory‘s blog (amazing blog, check it out) and I realised that Soundcloud allow you to make sets!? I don’t know why I never realised this before, as I’ve listened to loads of sets but never thought about making one.
So this first playlist is a summary of my favourite tracks of this last month. Be prepared for playlists for every occasion, festival and season of the year. Looking back, it’s been a good month for music. Ahhhh…
Remember Laura Welsh? I first featured her way back in March 2012 and, I knew I’d found something special. And today we have proof of just how special she is, with a new track ‘Unravel’.
The track was produced by Dev Hynes, who is a bit of a magic-maker at the moment, having produced two of my favourite tracks of 2012, Solange’s ‘Losing You’ and Sky Ferreira’s ‘Everything is Embarrassing’. He continues his winning streak with this track. What a guy.
Everytime I write a New Treat at the moment, I seem to be writing ‘I don’t know much about this person, but listen to their music’. It seems to be quite fashionable at the moment for artists to have an aire of mystery about themselves. When you go on Laura Welsh‘s Facebook profile, you also get that vibe. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to dig a little deeper.
Laura Welsh is from Staffordshire but now lives in London. She used to go by the stage name Hey Laura, and before that Laura and the Tears and even before that she used to write songs as plain old Laura Welsh. It seems that as Hey Laura she was actually in the process of recording a debut album and had written tracks with the likes of Guy Chambers so it would be interesting to know what happened to all of that. I actually saw her live when I first moved to London as Hey Laura although when I first heard Laura Welsh and the song ‘Ghosts’ I didn’t immediately associate the two artists. It seems her sound has continuously matured over the years, moving between names to constantly reinvent herself. Now, she is back to basics with Laura Welsh, and it seems her has found her sound.
Out of the songs available online, ’45′ is exquisit, a simple piano line accompanied by her strong and simple voice. The chorus ‘Maybe I don’t have all the answers // Doesn’t matter if I loose my way’, has Adele like power, and it also reminds me a little of acoustic videos of Emeli Sande. ‘Ghosts’ is quite beautiful too, very well produced and the harmonies on her voice add another level of power to the track. There is a lot of this stuff at the moment, Ren Harvieu, Kyla La Grange, Rae Morris and so on, but Laura Welsh is another one to put into the ‘females with big voices to watch in the future’ jar.
In addition to the songs below, there is also a number of tracks on her Tumblr page.
