Chasing Grace - Free

Things have started to move into a higher gear for Chasing Grace in the last few months, culminating in a February residency at London’s The Social billed under the name ‘Chasing Grace and Friends’ which saw the likes of Naughty Boy, Lauren Aquilina and a secret acoustic guest spot by throaty warbler Jessie J (yes it seems that Chasing Grace have some friends in high places). 

Next up comes Free, a tune which sees the band drop the soul aspects of their sound and go full-on in trying to rival Avicii’s Wake Me Up. Packing a big ‘woah-oh-oh’ chorus, propulsive speed-strums, strident piano and the bands trademark boy / girl vocals it’s the duo's most radio friendly morsel to date and allows them to add their name to all the ‘legends’ that have recorded songs entitled Free that include Curiosity Killed The Cat, Ultra Nate and DJ Quicksilver. The band play London’s Lexington in March and have so far been confirmed for this year’s Live At Leeds and Barn On The Farm festival. Our stab at naming them as Ones To Watch for 2013 back in 2012 (where at the time we called them Slow Club jamming with Ben Howard) may have been a little premature (the band even tweeted about it themselves at the tame saying that it was a surprise) but maybe 2014 is their's for the taking?

Chasing Grace - Free

Chasing Grace - Trust (Video)

When we first learnt that Saving Grace had changed their name to Chasing Grace we had visions of the male half of the band (Phil Plested) chasing the scantily clad female half (Grace Ackerman) round a park Benny Hill style just to make sure that there was a valid reason for the moniker. The reality of course is this is just the slightly weird and sordid place that we find ourselves as a music blogger, spending too much time sugaring our ears with new music. We need to get out more.

Chasing Grace first cropped up on Breaking More Waves at the back end of last year in our annual Ones to Watch list and since then have released an acoustic cover of Don’t You Worry Child by Swedish House Mafia and a variety of live performance cover videos. Now things seem to be stepping up a gear with a new shiny website, support shows with Sam Smith in May and (finally) a confirmed date for their debut EP which is due June 3rd. The song that leads the way from the EP is Trust which perfectly shows off their mix of urban and acoustic pop sounds. We’ve probably said this before but we guess Chasing Grace have been listening and playing along to Rihanna and Ben Howard.

Warning : this video contains quite a lot of ‘action’ of a young girl doing nothing in particular. The band does make an appearance in the film but you’ll have to keep a careful eye out for them somewhere around the 3 minute mark. Blink and they’ll be gone. Sneaky.

Chasing Grace - Trust (Video)

Chasing Grace - Dinner Will Be Served

One of the general theories, amongst those of us who like to come up with arguments and proposals about music (ready to be proved horrendously wrong) is that the internet has cross fertilised genres and tribes to the point where there will never be one dominant scene ever again.

19 year-old Philip Plested and 17 year-old Grace Ackerman aka Chasing Grace first graced this blog (ok that’s enough graces for one blog post) in November 2012 as we named them as one of our Ones to Watch for 2013 and they very much fit this music as an amalgamation idea. It seems that (rather like the likes of Ed Sheeran before them) they’re not content with just hanging out with one set of musicians that fit a blinkered window of the world (a criticism that could be labelled at indie rock traditionalists perhaps?) and are happy to mix it up with urban artists as well as more traditional acoustic singer songwriter types. From collaborating with Devlin on his forthcoming album to playing gigs with modern soul artist’s like Joel Culpepper at The Jazz Café, covering Swedish House Mafia and supporting over exposed pop types like Emeli Sande it seems that Chasing Grace are following a modern pick and mix approach to exposing their music.

So take a listen to their song Dinner Will Be Served, which from the limited information we have we understand will be on a forthcoming EP. We hear (as we’ve said before about their music) a touch of Ben Howard, The Staves but also a pop /soul sound in the female vocal.

Chasing Grace - Dinner Will Be Served

Chasing Grace - Don't You Worry Child

Cast your mind back to our Ones to Watch 2013 series and you may remember Hertfordshire duo Chasing Grace – they of recent name changes and disappearing Soundcloud pages. We introduced them by suggesting that you should imagine Slow Club jamming with Ben Howard, but now we’d like to alter that suggestion a little on the evidence of the first song they’ve uploaded to their new Soundcloud account. This cover version of Swedish House Mafia’s Don’t You Worry Child sounds more like Ben Howard backing a UK version of Kelly Clarkson. Odd? Quite possibly, but then even the idea of an acoustic version of Swedish House Mafia is a bit of an odd thing isn’t it?

But let’s remember one of the main laws of pop. (It's in Chapter 1 paragraph 1.0 of the Golden Rules of Pop so it must be important) Odd is good. As long as it’s not illegal.

So press play, have a listen and if you find it odd, remember the golden rule. If you want some of that odd / good stuff just give the band your email address and voila you've got it as a free download.

Want to know more about Chasing Grace? Then why not press play on the video below which shows the ‘highlights’ of their recent dates supporting Devlin. In summary those ‘highlights’ include going on a train, standing around a bit, playing some music and walking around a bit more. Yes, we admit this is not particularly odd for a band and therefore probably not that good, but as the video is only three minutes and forty five seconds long we have no idea what they got up to in the other ten thousand or so minutes of the tour. That’s probably where the odd stuff happened.

Chasing Grace - Don't You Worry Child (Tour Video)

Chasing Grace - Don't You Worry Child (Soundcloud Download Link)

Ones to Watch 2013 - #5 Chasing Grace

Imagine Slow Club jamming with Ben Howard. Then imagine that they decided to cover Be Careful by R Kelly & Sparkle. Now you don’t need to imagine any longer. For it’s time to welcome today’s One to Watch for 2013.

Until just a few days ago this duo was called Saving Grace. Then they announced via their Facebook page that changes were occurring. “So we had to change our name today, due to the fact that we weren't the only Saving Grace in town! But after a lot of thought, we came up with a name we like just as much, and hope you do to!”

So say hello to Chasing Grace, a very new act who (we suspect) you’re unlikely to see on any Ones to Watch 2013 list except this one. Not because they’re not good, but because it's still very early days for this young duo. Chasing Grace have yet to put out a single (their debut EP Dinner Will Be Served is due for release early next year) and the only material that exists on line are two You Tube covers (one of which is the aforementioned Be Careful) and a stream of a live version of the title track of the EP. They did have a Soundcloud page but that has mysteriously disappeared and as the You Tube songs are still under their old band name account we’re not sure if these will stay on line for much longer – so catch them whilst you can. (30th November update : Sure enough the You Tube account has now been deleted but one of the videos has been uploaded to a new account and streams below, although the audio of Dinner Will Be Served remains absent for now)

Chasing Grace consist of 19 year-old Philip Plested and 17 year-old Grace Ackerman. Their music consists of boy-girl vocals and simple acoustic guitars. They’re only just getting going, so why not embrace the new and jump on board with them early.

If there’s one act in this series that is more likely to appear on other Ones To Watch type lists at the end of next year (rather like when Marina & The Diamonds and Clare Maguire appeared on the Breaking More Waves Ones To Watch list a year before they appeared on the BBC Sound of List) it's Chasing Grace. Or by then they may have given up and moved on to pastures new. Let’s keep an eye and ear on how they do.

Chasing Grace - Dinner Will Be Served (Live version - Audio Stream Only)

Chasing Grace - Be Careful