It’s some time since I’ve featured any folk music on Breaking More Waves, but today I’m making amends with an artist from my home city of Portsmouth – Megan Linford. Megan has been bubbling under for some time now, but over the last year or so her profile has been gradually rising. Now seems the right time to introduce her here.
Megan played the 2018 edition of Portsmouth’s Dials Festival which I helped curate and direct and this year nabbed the prize for Best Solo Artist in the local newspaper's Portsmouth Guide Awards, a category for which she was first nominated for in 2013 when she was just 16. Incidentally, another previous winner was Breaking More Waves regular Jerry Williams, who is now getting national and international recognition – showing that despite Portsmouth’s reputation for producing nothing but generic meat and two veg man-rock there’s more to the local scene than that.
This Friday Megan plays The Square Tower in Old Portsmouth, a building that was first constructed in 1494 and is undoubtedly one of the city's most unusual and interesting venues. It's thick stone walls sit overlooking the sea and inside it's decorated with coats of arms displays and massive exposed timber joists The gig is already sold out.
Now comes Megan’s new single, a beautifully crafted piece called First Day of Spring. It’s a song that has gentle earthy tone to it that will please fans of Laura Marling in particular and perhaps The Staves. First Day of Spring is a song of new beginnings; from the opening sound of water and hauntingly eerie vocal sighs we find Megan coaxing an organic beauty out, singing of being in Winter’s grip, how nature can give a feeling of safety and being alone. The video finds her in some equally cold and snowy settings as well as the shingle beach close to where she’ll be playing live this Friday. Truly gorgeous stuff.
Megan Linford - First Day of Spring
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