For an artist who has yet to release a full album, Kyla La
Grange has certainly managed to make her mark on the music scene. Her name has
been ringing out across internet and radio, with her recent single Vampire Smile being posted on pretty
much every blog from here to Azerbaijan.
Kyla grew up in Watford, Hertfordshire and has been writing
songs since the age of five. However, it was not until one of her friends
introduced her to the music of Elliott Smith and Cat Power while she was
studying Philosophy at Cambridge University that she felt inspired to pursue
her talents: “They were unlike anything I’d heard. A lot of the music I’d
listened to as a teenager was quite shit and always tempered by a need to be a
certain style, or sell records. What I loved about them is just how raw and
honest the emotions seemed.” Struck by their raw emotional intensity, Kyla
wrote a handful of songs and took to the open mic night circuit in Cambridge.
While Kyla is influenced by the stripped to the bone
emotional content of the aforementioned artists, her music is a far cry from
their pared down musical style. Kyla La Grange doesn’t do things by half
measures. She has an ear for the dramatic and her songs are rousing anthems
with waves of instrumentation the size of full-scale tsunamis, aiming to sweep
you away upon the first listen. And then, there is the voice. Kyla’s voice
possesses a curious, attention grabbing duality where she sounds both delicate
and on the verge of breaking down, as well as sounding bold and undeniably
confident. There is a sense that, no matter how beaten she may be, she will say
what she needs to say. Her vocals range from soft and husky to wailing and
operatic, as is easy to hear on her debut offering Walk Through Walls. When asked about her vocals she simply
stated, “I think if you get into the emotion of something enough then it just
comes out of you.”
Kyla’s songs are dark and passionate, often concerned with
the fine line between intense love and dangerous obsession. For instance, Vampire Smile is an eerie and infectiously
catchy murder fantasy about being
“crazily obsessed with somebody, who I didn’t tell anyone about,” which
features the lyrics “I’m going to get so drunk on you and kill your friends /
Then you’ll need me and we can be obsessed” (We’ve all been there, right?). There
are flourishes of Kate Bush while her caustically raw and gothic lyrics have
shades of the aforementioned Elliott Smith and Nick Cave. At their heart,
Kyla’s songs are all about unflinching emotional honesty: “Writing songs was
something I always did because I felt like it was the only way I could release
all the noise and cluttered emotions inside my head. It was, and is, an escape.
It’s a place where I can be alone and immerse myself in emotions that I don’t
really know how to handle in real life.”
From her humble beginnings as a shy musician where she
confesses, “I’d be really self-contained, just be looking at the floor, in my
own mind,” Kyla has gone on to gain a reputation as a captivating performer. Now
backed by a full band, Kyla’s performances are known for her energetic stage
presence and the otherworldly regalia that adorn the stage, from branches to
pigeon feather tiaras. With her debut album Ashes
to be released at the end of July and followed by a tour of the festival
circuit, Kyla La Grange looks set to take this summer by storm. Watch this
space.
To listen to Walk Through Walls on Soundcloud click here.
Ashes will be released through ioki Records/Sony on 30th July.
JM
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