This is getting silly. Last year I posted how writing about Kacy Hill on Breaking More Waves seemed to be an annual thing following Experience in 2014, Foreign Fields in 2015 (still my favourite song that Jack Garratt has been involved in) and last year’s Lion, where most importantly I noted that Kacy has already done the obligatory ‘pop star in the bath’ picture. Now it’s 2017, so here we go again. This time round Kacy has released not one, but two songs on the same day. First there’s the downtempo minimalistic electronic ballad Like A Woman, but the one that gets my heart racing is the pulsing pop of Hard To Love, a song about trust, promises, excuses and lies in a relationship. Despite the despondent nature of the lyrics the melodies and music are positively jubilant; yes it’s another one of those songs that turns someone’s personal sadness into a universal joy, something that pop throughout its history has always done very well. According to her Twitter feed Kacy’s debut album is finally on the way and is about "sex, but it's also about intimacy, longing, heartbreak, and exploration." You can also find her guesting on the new Cashmere Cat album. Schedule your diaries for a further blog post about her on Breaking More Waves in 2018. Kacy Hill - Hard To Love
Rather like Christmas, posting about Kacy Hill on Breaking More Waves seems to be an annual affair. First in 2014 there was the experimental and ethereal Experience. This was followed in 2015 by my favourite song that Jack Garratt has been involved in - Foreign Fields (Jack - you should have stolen that one for yourself). Now, it’s time for the 2016 edition, with a new tune called Lion, the first taster from Kacy's debut album which will be released this autumn (or this Fall to all you US readers). It’s not to be confused with another song called Lion which is floating around at the moment, by Welsh singer Casi (here) which is equally good. So take a listen. Don’t be fooled by the gentle near flowery ambient percussive opening on this one that will probably make you think of South American mountain ranges, sunsets and birds of prey soaring elegantly overhead (OK maybe that’s just me), because by the time Lion gets to the chorus it bursts into something far more grandiose, without ever sounding fully overblown, the song dealing with Kacy’s own tendency to shroud feelings of guilt in defensiveness. It certainly bodes well for that album. Oh, and on a side note for regular readers, she certainly has pop star credentials. After all, she's already done the obligatory bath pic (here). Kacy Hill - Lion
We tweeted about this song a few days ago, but at the time were unable to post the track on the blog because the video was exclusive to HungerTV.com. Now, here at Breaking More Waves we really don’t care for exclusives / premieres or the like. We’ve explained why before (have a read here, item number 3 – but in summary we have no aspirations for the blog to be ‘big’ ‘popular’ or achieve ‘success’ in the way that others define success - that should be obvious from the way the blog looks), but the music industry, being an industry, and therefore competitive, has brainwashed itself into thinking that it needs exclusives to be ‘winning’ the competition. However, thankfully now the exclusivity period is over and we’re able to stream Foreign Fields by Kacy Hill on the blog for your listening pleasure. You might remember Kacy from around a year ago when she released her first song Experience and we wrote a post that managed to cover the subjects of spaghetti bolognaise, butt cheeks and freckles as well as the music. That post (and the subsequent tweet we put out about the post) got us into a little bit of trouble with some of the moral custodians / judgers of the internet, which was rather ironic as the post was (in its own warped way about music) about how people often make judgements without knowing the whole story, and in that particular case the custodians / judgers admitted that they hadn’t 1. Read the whole article to get context and see that it wasn't just about the physical appearance of a woman - and 2. Tried to understand / ask questions to clarify before making their judgement. But irrespective of if you remember Experience or that post, if you haven’t heard Foreign Fields yet, we command you to do so. Ok, that’s a bit assertive, but really, it’s worth your time, so pretty please press play. Foreign Fields is produced by Jack Garratt and you can almost instantly recognise his signature production style. The track starts with a very minimal, piano led downtempo experimental groove, but it doesn’t stand still with that. Instead it creeps forward towards a rhythmic frenzy that lifts the song off to the stars – maybe, just maybe, a place that Kacy is heading for? After all with Rankin directing the video and connections with Kanye West, Kacy has a head start of most fledgling potential pop stars. Kacy Hill - Foreign Fields
If like us you sometimes like to read the blurb about an artist before you press play (and you're reading this so we assume you do), your mindset has probably already been prejudiced before you listen. Here was the thought process we went through with Kacy Hill before our ears did the work on her debut track Experience: Good Points 1. We’ve seen her described as ethereal. We know it's a word that music journos and bloggers like to use a lot, but generally we like ethereal stuff. So we’re off to a good start. 2. She has freckles. Yes we know this has nothing to do with the music, but then pop music has never just been about the music. Anyway, has anyone proved there isn’t a direct correlation between good music and freckles? No, exactly – so until there’s scientific justification disproving our theory, this might actually be a valid reason for thinking that Kacy might be good. 3. She has the initial K. This is very good. Why? Because we have a weird warped thing for artists with names beginning with K and L – it’s utterly illogical – there’s probably some deeply disturbing psychological reason for it, but we’d prefer not to analyse that, the results might scare us. 4. She’s described her song as being ‘inspired by the intricacies of being human and our ability to think into detail and absorb meaning behind subconscious and conscious action,’ which sounds a bit pretentious, but we want our pop stars to be pretentious. After all who wants a pop star describing their song as ‘inspired by working in the supermarket and painting my dining room magnolia at the weekend.’ 5. Experience has been compared by others to Broods and FKA Twigs, which sounds interesting. Bad Points 1. There’s some PR blurb floating around about how she got into writing music accidentally, which is a bit like saying you started cooking some spaghetti bolognaise accidentally. Eg: It's a load of old bollocks. 2. The song was produced by Jaylien Wesley. This strikes fear into our hearts as Jaylien co-wrote Scream and Shout by Will.I.Am and Britney, a song that is a tragic crime against pop. (Sorry Britney if you’re reading this, you’ve done a few classics, but this wasn’t one of them.) Somewhere In Between Points 1. She’s already been an underwear model, which means the internet is awash with pictures of her butt cheeks. We’re not really sure if we want to see pictures of pop star’s butt cheeks, but we guess that’s ‘the modern way’ (and we say that with a slightly forlorn sigh). 2. She’s also been a dancer – on Kanye’s Yeezus tour. Then we listened We pressed play and didn’t worry about the spaghetti bolognaise or Will.I.Am anymore – because this is a slightly leftfield, slightly minimalistic electronic pop song, that certainly sits close to the FKA Twigs school of oddness, although perhaps lacking some of the warped sophistication and possessing none of the eroticism of Tahliah Barnett’s work. There’s more artiness to this song and its accompanying video than we might have expected (a good thing) and the more it's played, the more compelling it becomes. We're not sure if this is just a side project before Kacy gets back into modelling, but if there's more to come, but we'll be listening with interest. Kacy Hill - Experience (Video)
