Friday 10 January 2014

Rae Morris - New Waves


A free download and some waffle around major vs indie vs unsigned artists, the BBC Sound Of 2014, the Brit Awards and music blogging, before we write a paragraph about Rae Morris. Phew.

Around this time every year since 2003 we get to learn the annual BBC Sound of Poll winner and also the nominees for the Brit Awards. This year, following what we believe is a slight change in the rules, allowing those who have already had a UK top 20 hit as ‘guest vocalists’ but not a hit on their own right to be nominated, it was absolutely no surprise to find Disclosure and Naughty Boy guest vocalist Sam Smith topping the BBC Poll. The Brits, which is more a celebration of the music industries sales success and an attempt to make the commercially successful even more so, (with usually one or two ‘critics choices’ thrown in for good measure – this year John Grant gets that nod on International Solo Male Artist) found the likes of Ellie Goulding, Bastille and Rudimental leading the way.

To coincide with this, as sure as eggs is eggs, on line there will are music fans offering a more dissenting voice. One of the criticisms thrown at these awards is that they are run by the music industry for the music industry and favour artists who are signed to major labels. It’s one of the reasons why the Blog Sound poll came into existence, the theory being that music bloggers had a wider perspective than just artists signed to corporates.

Here at Breaking More Waves we try not to get too entrenched into the whole ‘major / indie / unsigned’ argument when selecting the music we post. For a start sometimes it’s not even clear or known if an artist is signed or not, but mainly because this blog is about music we like and we don’t just like an artist because of the label they’re on (or not). There are plenty of great blogs who rigidly stick to writing about unsigned or independent bands and we salute what they do – their blog posts are probably of far more benefit to the artists than say when we post the latest Ellie Goulding video. Let’s face it Ellie is hardly likely to email us thanking us for her support. 

Actually that’s a lie, once upon a time Ellie Goulding did email us personally, back in the day, when we were still acting as a 'critic' before we had a change of heart about music criticism, its value and who (if anyone) should be doing it. That email came about after we wrote this. It was a very polite email. But those were the days when she was playing to 60 people. Ellie if you fancy popping us an email again that's cool, although these days our in box is so overloaded we'll probably miss it - so make sure the title is clear, something like 'LUNCH DATE EMAIL INVITATION FROM ELLIE GOULDING'. Thanks.

Which brings us to today’s new artist – Rae Morris. No, she hasn't asked us out for a lunch date either, but she was signed to a major label, Atlantic, straight out of college at the age of 18. She’s released 3 EP’s, has toured with the likes of Bombay Bicycle Club, Lianne La Havas, Noah and The Whale (including a huge show at Royal Albert Hall) and Tom Odell, features on Bombay Bicycle Club’s fourth album So Long, See You Tomorrow (including an appearance on their current single Luna ) and has been on plenty of blogs  since 2011. Despite having seen her live, we’ve never featured Rae on the blog before, her previous material just not quite hitting our musical g-spot. But new free to download song Skin does.

So let’s get to the crux of this. Irrespective of if Skin was being released on major label or as a d-i-y effort, if we found it by a random search on Soundcloud, through another music blog or via a PR email in the inbox (which was the case) we love the song and that is why we're featuring it. Let its piano chime sound drip feed you beauty. It may not clinch you instantly, but give it time. It soon gets under your er….skin.

Rae Morris - Skin

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