October 2015
It’s easy to be cynical about new musical acts. Some artists precede the genre they’d most comfortably slot into and don’t get the attention they deserve; some merrily ride on the coattails of others, benefitting from the happenstance of all their musical stars aligning; some abandon their soul and change their sound in order to gain traction; and some would really benefit from their audiences not overthinking whether they’re going to be commercial and successful or not and just concentrating on how good the music is. Slotting neatly into this final category is twenty-three-year-old Leeds-born and Edinburgh-raised Esther Joy Lane, whose timely nascence is largely a product of her youth coinciding with the advent of Garageband, and whose sound can – incidentally and not detrimentally – be herded into the “chilled but edgy” paddock of The XX and London Grammar.
This, Esther’s debut EP, is so confident and accomplished that it’s astounding that it isn’t yet major label, TV sync stuff; someone needs to send stand-out track You Know to Grey’s Anatomy immediately. The acoustic-inspired sparse electro soul of the synths and gentle beats perfectly frames Esther’s low, velvety voice, giving it space without overcrowding it; emotion is conveyed how little she gives away – the more she controls, the more she implies.
The songs do admittedly lie somewhere on a continuum that has Jessie Ware at one end and Grimes, Banks and FKA Twigs at the other, but they’re all favourable comparisons; Esther shares with them a certain hypnotic and beguiling quality, with each play of this EP more rewarding. It has a sort of late night inner-city shimmering-streetlights-reflected-a-river vibe; sultry, personal and highly polished, yet claustrophobic, detached and aloof: in short, captivating.