About Nuala
A singer and storyteller with one foot in the Irish mystic and one foot on the dark streets of London, Nuala writes dream pop songs that coruscate and captivate.
She was discovered by the renowned producer John Reynolds (Sinead O’Connor, Damien Dempsey, Natacha Atlas, Indigo Girls, etc.) who first heard Nuala’s songs online and was hooked. “I didn’t know who she was or where she came from,” Reynolds says. “Her songs haunted me.”
A recording session was set up and after two days they had captured five tracks. The first to be released is Lay Down my Gun, a metaphysical distillation of the ties that bind love and faith. It was produced in collaboration with Brian Eno, who lends a twinkling, sorcerer’s gloss to the wonder of Nuala’s pure, luminous voice.
With a simple, stark writing style influenced by heroes ranging from PJ Harvey to Leonard Cohen, Nuala evokes an otherworldly sense of the mythical and magical. She writes of deep rivers and distant planets, of secrets in the air and ultrasonic love affairs. Her songs, which range from delicate acoustic guitar or piano ballads to electric psych-rock numbers, ebb and flow like shadows flickering in candlelight. The album takes us from the yearning simplicity of River Song (“Oh river won’t you take me far away from my broken heart”) to the emotional wastes of Jupiter: “Send me to a cold moon/Icy, barren land/Controlling, withholding/See how long I stand.” In Artemisia, a spacey, psych-rock song, the dark angels of inspiration take her diving to the bottom of a glass of absinthe: “Come taste the sin upon my smile/My spirit burns your skin…”
“I was born on a November morning and I remember my every birthday against the black and orange of Halloween and winter evenings,” she says. “I loved the mystery and drama of Halloween and the long darkness of the winter months. I wanted to delve into that darkness and discover what it held.”Nuala’s music is a beacon in the darkness and Lay Down my Gun is the sound of a twinkling star being born.
“It is a debut release but, with an album due in 2020, I think this will be the beginning of something really special.”
★★★★★
Andy Snipper – Music News