Kelly Oliver

I first discovered this lovely lady on Fatea Showcases. I always enjoy these as they are great to cast your net out and discover brilliant talent that you may have otherwise missed.  The most recent editions ‘Chemistry’ and ‘Magnetism’ have introduced me to at least three artists that I felt I should explore further.

The first of these is Kelly Oliver who has her debut EP ‘Far From Home’ now available both as downloadable and physical copies. The EP is a standard 5 tracks and the first song I heard was the title song from the EP ‘Far From Home’.

This tune is a very gentle, soft tune with a pleasant guitar strum setting the scene of a young lady eagerly awaiting the return of a young man of which she is pretty smitten. Despite her mother’s warnings and the way the chap decided to spend most of his time away from the central character is still devoted to his return. And they say long distance relationships are difficult.

I ended up putting this song on repeat for almost an hour as each time the beauty of Kelly’s voice and the musical foundation really just builds and builds on you. The occasional harmonica intermission also did a great job of breaking up the song and keeping the variety going so the listener doesn’t get bored in any way, and this keep going throughout other tracks as well.

The next tune, ‘Keilan are you Coming?’ has some nice differences, being much faster paced with a louder strum on the guitar and a lot more fire in the voice. In a way, it’s quite a similar song, but they display two totally separate emotions, the first on ‘Far From Home’ is one of patience and then this one seemed a little more like an excited child struggling to hold back that excitement. This is a nice variety then from a later track ‘He Walked on the Side of the Sea’ which is calmer.

Kelly has been influenced a lot by Irish traditional music and this certainly comes across her music, but luckily that’s all it is, an influence. Kelly does a fantastic job of keeping her music so wonderfully individual and simple. I am often impressed by musicians who make their music stand out with original ideas are bizarre combinations of vocals and instrument, but what is even more impressive is to find individuals who can be original but give you an air of familiarity so that their music is comfortable and soothing. Kelly has certainly gotten this balance spot on.

I loved this EP and I wish I had made it to Folkstock last September (I was supposed to go but alas last minute couldn’t make it) as I would have seen her live! Kelly has certainly made the list of live performances I must find.

I wonder if Kelly would make what I like to call a ‘wildcard’ track when she does a full length album, as she certainly has a secure sound. Wildcards are songs that are quite different from the rest, usually shorter bizarre tracks that many artists are now attempting. Although risky for people I believe Kelly could certainly pull it off, although to be honest she wouldn’t need to.

A lovely singer, to find out more follow these links and be sure to follow Kelly on Twitter @kellyoliverfolk, and me @paulrawcliffe

Kelly - http://www.kellyoliver.co.uk

Folkstock - http://www.folkstockfestival.com/

Fatea Magazine/ Showcases – http://www.fatea-magazine.co.uk/

DFTBA