With a crystalline soprano voice and an honest approach to writing, Alice Phoebe-Lou’s music has touched people from around the world. Her fiercely independent approach to music can be seen in her move from Cape Town to Europe at 16 to busk, an experience which saw her develop her sound, release her debut EP ‘Momentum’ and helped her slowly build an international audience. Performances at TED events in Berlin in 2014 and London in 2015, saw her reach even wider audiences and in 2016 she would release her first album, ‘Orbit’ taking its influence from jazz. Since then she has gone on to perform around the world including the US, where she performed at SXSW in 2018.
It was immediately after SXSW ended that Alice and her band members flew from Austin to San Francisco to start recording her second full-length album, ‘Paper Castles’, to be released in March. Recorded at a residential studio with a fairy tale layout embed on the side of hills facing the Pacific Ocean, Alice worked with Grammy-winning producer and mixing engineer Noah Georgeson to sculpt the tracks into what she had imagined. Featuring a number of different vintage synths, organs, various percussive elements, saxophone, flute, electric guitar and Alice’s unique voice, the album’s sound is an evolution of the dream-like indie-folk that Alice has crafted over the years. This can be heard on the album’s first single ‘Something Holy’.
Opening with her fluttering voice over the gentle strumming of her guitar it slowly builds into a relaxed, organ-driven chorus in which she expresses her wish to be desired by someone that understands her. “Recognise the workings of my mind/and then touch me/like something holy,” – Alice’s ode to her lover is powerful in its honesty and raw emotion. In her closing lines, she expresses “thank you for showing me/that I’m not alone/thank you for showing me/that I’m never alone,” highlighting the importance of love.
With March seeing Alice embark on her first headline tour in the US and April seeing her return to Europe for a tour in support of ‘Paper Planes’, Alice continues to grow and capture more hearts around the world.
