AILSA TULLY, the rising Welsh singer-songwriter who’s no stranger to these pages, has announced her new EP, Holy Isle, will be out mid-August on Dalliance Recordings, and has dropped the lead single, the complex, impressionistic indie rock of “Greedy”. Take a listen below.
Holy Isle is, in essence, a break-up musically diarised with a difference; instead of sorrow, recrimination, wallowing, the former chapel musician instead looks back at the intimacy now passed with empathy and a generosity of feeling, wishing her ex the very best as their paths diverge.
The EP also sees Ailsa return to her first instrumental love, the cello, which in more recent times had given way to the bass as her weapon of choice – and the instrument on which she still writes, applying her cellist’s training to her playing and lending her songs an otherly quality.
And “Greedy” is no exception, with the bass humming away under her swooping vocals, airy as a songbird in flight, with an early Lush-like shoegazey breeziness evident throughout.
“‘Greedy’ is about the intensity of new beginnings and transitional stages of life, where everything feels very raw. It is about the all-consuming feeling of wanting someone and opening myself up to the world in a new and messy way,” she says.
The release of the Holy Isle EP on August 20th coincides with Ailsa touring the UK as main support with the dark, cinematic Another Sky, those dates being as follows:
Wednesday, August 11th, Glasgow, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut;
Friday, August 13th, Manchester, The Star & Garter;
Saturday, August 14th, Leeds, Hyde Park Book Club;
Thursday, August 19th, Brighton, The Hope & Ruin;
Friday, August 20th, Oxford, The Bullingdon;
Saturday, August 21st, Birmingham, Sunflower Lounge;
Thursday September 2nd, London, Bermondsey Social Club, and
Friday September 3rd, Cardiff, Clwb lfor Bach.
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