Tuesdays are for tea, cake and beautiful acoustics.
It’s reading week, so Ground is emptier than usual. Then again, that just makes the atmosphere much more intimate. There is less hustle, less background noise and more focus on the music. Tallulah starts playing and immediately captivates the audience. She does an electric one-woman show with a looping machine. Her sound is at the beginning melodic, soft, with a ‘kind of ballsy strength to it’ as she describes it, before it explodes into a mini-symphony of rough guitar and looped vocals. Her energy quickly fills the room. Shame it’s only for about half an hour.
After the gig, we sat down for a five minute interview. This is what came out of it.
How would you describe your musical style?
Probably quite eccentric. I guess there’s a lot of melody, a lot of harmony and it’s quite ‘soundscapey’. It goes from being really delicate to kind of rock’n’roll and edgy, so I think it’s quite dynamic. I think it’s quite human, quite female. It’s got that kind of fragility and the kind of ballsy strength to it.
We got your cover of Tom Odell’s ‘Another Love’ and I personally really liked it. Why that song?
It’s a great song. It’s a great song and there was a tossup between that another song by Half Moon Run called ‘Full Circle’ and I really wanted to do that. But, yeah, it’s just a great song.
Tell us a bit about your latest album, ‘The Banshee and the Moon’.
So ‘The Banshee and the Moon’. I recorded it with a producer called Danton Supple and like my two previous albums, it’s released as a book. So there’s a piece of art for each of the songs on the album and the book narrates the story behind crowdfunding and being an independent artist. And I guess my mission, which is just kind of to make music and to present my albums as books and to tour and… you know, the intention behind what I do is that it’s amazing for me when I see people get inspired by what I do and getting excited about it and then getting involved in what I’m doing. I’ve done projects like my second album where I worked with thirty different artists and each artist created a piece of work in response to a song. And it was amazing to collaborate and to just be creative with other people and to see other people being excited about what I was doing, and that in turn leading to something else. So yeah, that’s my kind of thing.
Sounds great! You recently appeared on BBC Introducing with Sam Bonham and received a nomination for the Arts and Culture Woman of the Future Awards – sounds very, very impressive – so it’s been a few busy months. What next after this tour?
Probably sleep. I think it’s like thirty shows in ten days or something. There’s a couple of big shows at the end of this year. And then I’m really just gonna take January off. I say take January off because I really wanna do some writing, but it’s funny actually; it’s impossible to take time off from music because it’s everything that I do. I haven’t done a conventional holiday – you know, like, when people go ‘I’m gonna go on a holiday and sit on a beach and read a book’, I’m like ‘what the fuck is that?’ – I haven’t done that for, like, years! But I wanna take some time out from being on the road and just do some more writing and, yeah, that’s my next step. I don’t know what’s gonna unfold from doing this tour. I guess I’d really like to have… [At this point, we’re briefly but very pleasantly interrupted by a student who bought Tallulah’s album, making it the third sale of the day. Needless to say, Tallulah is quite excited.] I’d really love to find a really good team of people to work with. It’s been me for years, for all three albums, and I really strongly believe that what I’ve achieved on my own – you know, there’s been enough people interested in my music and supporting me for three albums and I think wow, just imagine if I had an actual team of people and a manager and a label, how far it could get! Cos there’s only so much one person can do. My hope is to find that team of people really, so maybe that will happen next year!
Well, good luck with everything! Thank you for playing for us today, it’s been really great and I’m sure everyone’s enjoyed it - and good luck with the album sales!
As we start packing up, Tallulah heads over to a table and chats with a couple of students who bought her T-shirt and album. It’s clear she’s very grateful to everyone supporting her. They take a quick photo (her Twitter and Facebook accounts have been recently filled with selfies from the tour), she gets a coffee, and sets off to the next uni for another Coffee House Session.
Bio
Tallulah Rendall was born into a household of eccentricities. Her Aussie father bought a Lion called Christian from Harrods, whilst her mother ran The Black Sheep – the nightclub that Jimi Hendrix played at for two weeks whilst Hey Joe was number one in the UK charts. The basement of their home was filled with vinyl brought back from previously run nightclubs and it was here that Tallulah was surrounded by music and where she began her journey into becoming a multi-instrumentalist, artist and songwriter.
To date she has written and coproduced three solo crowd funded albums, all of which have been presented within beautiful hardback books that include individual pieces of artwork for each of the songs as well as the stories that inspired them. Throughout her career she has remained a truly independent artist, never having had management or a label behind her. Despite this she has managed to not only produce a strong body of work but also tour her music worldwide.
In 2006 Tallulah set up as a solo artist and was labelled a “ferociously talented singer songwriter” by The London Word. She recorded a ‘live’ EP titled ‘Without Time’ at Snake Ranch Studios in London. On the EP was a rendition of ‘Black Seagull’, Tallulah’s signature track that caught the attention of Shirley Bassey, who asked her to be the only performer at her 70th Birthday Party and noted that “Tallulah has a wonderful voice”.
Tallulah’s most recent album release ‘The Banshee and the Moon’ is inspired by bands such Apparat, The Knife and Fever Ray. In this album she has turned away from the electric guitar to focus on the bass, in her intention to create a moonlike soundscape. The result is a combination of soaring vocals, melodic bass lines, dirty guitars and space.
Tallulah recently appeared on BBC Introducing South West with Sam Bonham and this year she was shortlisted for the Arts & Culture Woman of the Future Award.
Source: Coffee House Sessions
Coffee House Sessions is a dynamic initiative that exposes the best in upcoming UK music talent to the student market via daytime performances in university coffee shops.
Queen Mary is one of only two London universities who are part of this exclusive national tour, showcasing the best up-and-coming talent on a national scale.
Featured artists will be playing in Ground every Tuesday from 3pm.
Next week, November 11, we have Gavin James. Event details here.