Rae Morris - Love Again

Watching the development of Rae Morris over the last few years has been a little bit like watching a baby bird slowly stumble out of the nest, grow and take flight. No more so does that flight occur than on single Under The Shadows and this track Love Again, a newly minted gem taken from her debut album Unguarded which sees the light of day next week. Whilst Rae’s songs may have a soft intimacy to them, Love Again is bold and open musically –it would probably work with something you wouldn’t necessarily associate Rae’s music with - a banging dance remix.

Rae Morris - Love Again

Rae Morris - Stay Another Day

Aye up. Snowman ‘ere. Keeping it chill. I’m the coolest dude in town. Yep, I’m a snowman hipster. 

All right stop, collaborate and listen, ice is back with a brand new invention. It’s another Christmas tune, the final one on Breaking More Waves this Christmas Eve; a crisp version of East 17’s Stay Another Day by Rae Morris, incorporating a little bit of carol Silent Night for extra Christmas flavour. Rae’s a good lass, after all she’s already had a song out called Cold. Anyway, this one is pretty enough to melt even the most cynical heart, or even a snowman. Melt? What? No….help…… Bloody global warming.

No more ice ice baby. Happy Christmas.

Rae Morris - Stay Another Day

Rae Morris - Up Again

Whilst Rae Morris has been embracing all sorts of multi-facetted instrumentation on her recent releases, Up Again (mainly) strips things back to her voice, keys and an exquisite song that finds Rae getting over “the curse of love” and looking towards the future after she’s found the “answers to the questions that are keeping me down.”

“Take my life and start it somewhere else,” she sings as the piano tones mirror the desire to move onwards, gradually growing in strength, striding forward for a new life, leaving you feeling just a little bit emotional and overcome by it all at the end. Lovely.

Up Again is taken from the Closer EP. Rae is off on a huge tour with George Ezra next month - if you're going, make sure you get there early to see her.

Rae Morris - Up Again

Rae Morris - Closer

Imagine hair wars. On one side Rae Morris. On the other side Lorde. What a mammoth battle that would be and one that we really couldn’t take sides on. 

Whilst we leave that epic struggle floating in your mind let’s turn to the music, reminding ourselves that the rules of pop are pretty emphatic that the better the hair, the better the music. Therefore the new Rae Morris song Closer is unquestionably and unequivocally good. Built around Rae’s piano tinkles and a hooky radio friendly chorus this one could easily sit on either the playlists of Radio 1 or Radio 2 – it’s one of those songs that we really couldn’t imagine anyone disliking.

Rae’s debut album (title not yet revealed) was in bulk recorded with Ariel Rechtshaid (Haim, Vampire Weekend, Kylie) in the States and is waiting in the wings. If Closer is an indication of what it will be like, it shows that despite Rae’s whisperingly shy stage presence her recorded work can be as full-bodied as her hair.

Rae Morris - Closer

Rae Morris - Do You Even Know (Video)

Today Rae Morris returns to the pages of Breaking More Waves with her gorgeous new single Do You Even Know, due for release on May 6th.

The follow up to Skin is one of the more upbeat songs in her current live set. That’s not to say that it’s an all guns blazing disco-ball frenzy, but in the same way as a songwriter like David Gray put a few subtle late-night clicks and taps onto the likes of Babylon in 1999 to find his songs on a radio-bound journey, Rae’s finespun beauty benefits from the baby beats. Hopefully with her profile rising through her recent Bombay Bicycle Club support dates and another forthcoming headline tour in April and May (which includes a date at the decrepit but wonderful Wilton’s Music Hall in London) radio playlisters will take note and give this lovely song some air time.

"I wanted people to be able to feel the discomfort and awkwardness of feeling misunderstood. I wanted people to see me as a mannequin shining on the outside but with the inside well hidden,” Rae said of the video that accompanies this song which deals with solitude and how people never really know who you are. Engaging and exquisite pop.

Rae Morris - Do You Even Know

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