Keeley Forsyth - Limbs [White LP+DL]

The Leaf Label

£21.58

Format: LP+DL (WHITE)
Catalogue No.: BAY124VX
Barcode: 843190012435
Release Date: 25 Feb 2022
Genre: Singer-Songwriter / Indie

Limbs is the follow-up to composer, singer and actor Keeley Forsyth’s debut album Debris. The album will be released on CD, black vinyl LP and limited edition INDIES ONLY white vinyl (900 copies for the world).

Debris received unanimous critical support, including a full-page feature in The Guardian and eight pages in Q . Despite its early January release, Debris had an excellent showing in the end of year lists for 2020, including Uncut, the Quietus, The Line of Best Fit, Loud and Quiet, Rough Trade, Norman, Resident, Love Record Stores, Jumbo, Drift and Stranger Than Paradise.

Support from Ben Frost, Mary Anne Hobbs, Maxine Peake, Circuit des Yeux, Gazelle Twin, Colin Stetson, Ben Wheatley, John Doran, Laura Barton, Jude Rogers and Stuart Maconie.

For fans of Nico, Scott Walker, Aldous Harding, Karen Dalton, Susanna & The Magical Orchestra, Jenny Hval, PJ Harvey, Fever Ray, Lucrecia Dalt.

Keeley Forsyth’s 2020 debut album found an elemental voice ringing out from beneath the rubble. Understated but devastating, Debris' success led to a transformation as the songs were brought to the stage.

An innate performer, Forsyth found herself channelling something she hadn’t yet fully come to understand, and it was here that the voice found on Debris began to probe outwards and discover a physical form. It’s a form that fully takes shape on her second album Limbs.

Anyone who saw Forsyth perform in the brief window after Debris was released and before shows ground to a halt can testify to the show’s power. In pin-drop silence, enraptured audiences watched as Forsyth inhabited a new body. No stranger to portraying characters in her career as an actor, this was something different.

Limbs is a record of reckoning with that change. After the initial purge of Debris, those feelings of trauma and fear remain but there’s also a life to live. “Save me from the chair where sadness lies,” she sings on opener ‘Fires’, wrestling the need to be creative within the routine of daily life. Where Debris was composed and recorded in close proximity to instrumentalist and arranger Matthew Bourne, Limbs deploys a more expansive palette .With Forsyth at the centre, collaborator Ross Downes acts as another limb, remotely producing the pulses and drones which feed back into the voice. Bourne this time is enlisted to “Bring some of the soil of Debris” into Limbs. The result is clearer and more spacious. If Debris sounded like it was buried under the earth-Forsyth’s voice repressed and breathless-Limbs brings some of that live presence.

Limbs will be preceded by three digital singles:‘Bring Me Water’, ‘I Stand Alone’ and ‘Wash’‘ . Bring Me Water’ will be accompanied by a video directed by Ross Downes. ‘Wash’ features the talents of Grammy Award-winning percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

A magnetic and intuitive live performer, Forsyth’s set at this year’s End of the Road Festival was described as “arguably the weekend’s most striking performance” by Loud and Quiet . She will return to the stage in 2022–including her biggest headline show to date at The Barbican’s Milton Courtvenue on March 11.

UK print and online media handled by Nathan Beazer at Dog Day Press.
Radio and TV by Thea Hudson-Davies at Leaf.

9/10 BOXED REVIEW IN UNCUT : “Another stunning album. Sharing some tonal similarities with the recent explorations of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, it’s a sparse and dark record but also tender, poignant and potent’’

1. A1. Fires
2. A2. Bring Me Water
3. A3. Limbs
4. A4. Land Animal
5. B1. Blindfolded
6. B2. Wash
7. B3. Silence
8. B4. I Stand Alone