Grace Lightman - Black Is The Colour (ft Parallax Orchestra)

In our introducing post on Grace Lightman we suggested that Grace was unlikely to be producing any songs that we can proclaim to be club bangers in the near future. How right we were. For today Grace has released her take on the traditional song Black Is The Colour (Of My True Love’s Hair), a tune that has followed the classic folk tradition of being passed down over the years from listener to listener, from artist to artist, with everyone from Nina Simone, Mike Seeger, Cara Dillon, Paul Weller, Christy Moore and The Corrs recording it.

This is a bewitching and eerie version, taking the ghostly sparseness that contemporary folk bands such as The Unthanks have used to such effect over the last few years and using stillness as much as instrumentation to create an experimental torch song, with the Parallax Orchestra (former Dry The River member Williams Harvey and cellist Maddie Cutter who have previously collaborated with the likes of Meadowlark, Bring Me The Horizon and Martin Grech) adding beautifully uneasy strings. Pop banger it isn't, fascinating, almost subtly menacing listen it is.

Grace plays her first solo live gig this week at Brighton’s Green Door Store (which is free) on August 19th before she plays The Waiting Room in London on September 3rd. Keep an eye on our Twitter feed (here) as we will be bringing the odd photo or tweet from one of those shows.

Grace Lightman - Black Is The Colour (ft Parallax Orchestra)