2020 will forever be remembered as the year that didn’t so much as tear up the rulebook, as fake it’s death and feed it to Joe Exotic’s tigers.
The Covid-19 lockdown has left even the most diligent heads amongst us feeling lost and uncertain, but for those in the music industry it has been particularly tough. With release schedules and live dates coordinated months in advance, the lost momentum caused by the pandemic has been a blow to many, including singer-songwriter Aoife Boyle, AKA Reevah. Due to embark on her first headline UK and Irish tour this month, she’s now had to postpone plans until later in the year; with this in mind, it would have been so easy to hold on to new EP, ‘A Different Light’, for a while longer. However, one listen to the record later and the bold decision to follow through becomes clear. Here we find an artist in transition, hovering above her native Derry and looking solely skyward.
From the opening gallop of ‘You Said, Tell Me’, with its blustering tubthump, it’s clear this record shows not only a different light, but a tougher skin than Reevah’s previous work. She has a shiny new band for a start, and one not afraid to let her songs reach for festival crowd singalongs in some distant future. She sets the tone from early on, “You told me I wear black all the time, well it’s just me mourning my own life...I don’t care, this is me, I’m free and I’m back”.
Since her tentative first steps on debut single ‘Daydreamer’, Reevah has been slowly shedding the campfire folk innocence of her early writing. In its place, the light and shade is more clearly defined, like on the Kacey Musgraves-esque ‘Older Now’. Bouncing along a bluesy guitar lick, it's a lush, fuller sound than we’ve heard so far from the young songwriter, who feels completely at ease within ‘A Different Light’s bolder arrangements. Reevah is in a reflective mood throughout this record, talking at one time or another to past lovers, family and even her younger self. Here we’re reminded that though ‘our faces change, our minds remain the same…’.
On ‘Weight of the World’, the sky caves in on the world Reevah has built so far. Her voice rises and falls, going toe to toe with the chaos around her. They trade blows, pushing the track ever forward. “She’s ready to jump, she’s ready to fall….can you feel the weight of the world?”. There’s a brief calm, before tribal drums and haunting harmony return us to the grey skies. We’ve barely time to catch our breath before ‘Real Enough’ comes crashing in, just Reevah’s voice and a lone piano tasked with closing the record.
Melancholic and moody, ‘Real Enough’ wastes no time dragging a former friend over hot coals as she asks, ‘Was it real enough for you? It was real enough for me…”. Though soulful and captivating (I’d imagine watching Reevah play this live would be epic), her band playing such a vital role throughout ‘A Different Light’ only to drop out at the final hurdle is the only slight blip on an otherwise courageous forward step. You expect the track to kick into life, instead it burns slowly like a fire at dawn. Perhaps that’s the point - a comma, rather than a full stop. The next chapter will have a lot to live up to.
