Featuring Lulu James in our introducing section of the blog that we call New Waves seems like a misnomer. After all this is an artist that first cropped up on our radar at the back end of 2011 and we caught live in 2012 - she's hardly fresh out of the box now is she?
However,the remainder of this week’s blog posts feature artists playing the 2013 Great Escape Festival (which we previewed yesterday) that we recommend but have never featured on the blog before. In fact Lulu played the Great Escape in 2012 and we nearly posted about her then, but we weren’t fully convinced at that stage. Her 21st century soul voice has always been powerfully creamy but her early material such as The End and Rope Mirage whilst being sleek and sophisticated productions, just didn’t quite deliver in the tune department. Music industry types would probably suggest that she was an artist ‘still under development’.
Yet if that was the case, now it feels and sounds like that development is complete. The midnight smoothness of Be Safe, released through Black Butter Records matched unquestionably spot-on contemporary production with a lovely melody that stuck around in the brain even when the song had finished. Then the electronic-disco of recent track Closer stepped things up several levels and took us to the dance floor with a very mid 90’s soul-pop groove. With these two songs and a fully assured performance in a candlelit chapel at the end of last year, we were left in no doubt of Lulu’s talent. A blog post has been overdue ever since. So with this Geordie lass taking to the boards alongside one of our biggest blog crushes Chvrches as part of the Neon Gold / Chess Club showcase at Digital on Brighton’s seafront as part of the Great Escape, it makes sense to finally feature her on Breaking More Waves without it feeling like a misnomer at all.
Lulu James - Be Safe
Lulu James - Closer (Video)
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