Caroline (w/ Belle-Skinner)

London-based eight piece caroline are excited to announce that their eponymous debut album, mixed by John ‘Spud’ Murphy (black midi, Lankum), will be released on Feb 25th 2022 via Rough Trade Records. Hear ‘IWR’ a new track taken from the forthcoming album and check out its self-directed video now. ‘caroline’ will be available on the usual formats but also as a ‘Dinked’ limited vinyl edition of 600 numbered copies available through UK independent record shops on transparent vinyl with a bonus 7” featuring exclusive audio and a signed print.

caroline began in early 2017, evolving out of weekly improvisation sessions. Band members brought together their shared influences, including Midwestern emo, Appalachian folk, minimalist classical and various forms of electronic music, slowly expanding their ranks as the songs developed. Rough Trade released their debut single “Dark blue” in March 2020, and the eight-piece were nominated as Ones To Watch at the 2020 AIM Awards where they were narrowly beaten by Arlo Parks. A second single ‘Skydiving onto the library roof’ followed in May 2021.

Mike O’Malley explains the thinking behind new single ‘IWR’, “Jasper was sending a lot of home-recorded nylon guitar and singing ideas, and one just stuck because it was just a really beautiful vocal melody. We had an initial guitar-based idea, then we decided that on a certain chord this wall of violins should come in.” They experimented with an idea of “extreme closeness,” recording the guitar as quiet as possible, with the microphone placed right next to it and the gain turned up to the maximum.

A version of ‘Dark blue’, caroline’s sublime first single opens the album, written on the day Casper Hughes, Jasper Llewellyn and Mike O’Malley first started playing together half a decade ago. Llewellyn and Hughes met at university in Manchester, and on moving to London invited Llewellyn’s old friend Mike O’Malley to form a group, rehearsing in the upstairs room of a South London pub. Yet as they kept on playing that hypnotic ‘Dark blue’ riff, it became clear that something altogether deeper was emerging. “As soon as ‘Dark blue’ became more structured, we thought some swoony violin would be good,” says O’Malley. To provide it, they recruited Oliver Hamilton, who had also had a stint on bass in their early days.

As the band’s sound kept expanding, so too did their line-up, eventually becoming an eight-piece completed by trumpeter and bassist Freddy Wordsworth, another violinist Magdalena McLean, percussionist Hugh Aynsley and flute, clarinet and saxophone player Alex McKenzie. By the time the cast settled towards the end of 2019, the songs too were expansive and emotive pieces, their rich palette drawing on a mixture of choral singing, Midwestern emo and O’Malley and Llewellyn’s roots in Appalachian folk.

On ‘caroline’, songs can cascade like an avalanche with the full force of all those instruments, squalling and rumbling on the edge of all-out collapse. At other times they slip back into impossibly fragile moments of quiet – a simple bassline or a rattle of snare the only sound amid a dark sea of silence. caroline know exactly the right balance between restraint and release. “Sometimes things sound much better when there’s empty space,” says Llewellyn. “Sometimes you might populate [a song] with too many things and forget that an element on its own is enough.”

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Belle-Skinner is a dark nostalgic singer-songwriter based in New York. With a hauntingly beautiful, lilting soprano and innate sense of melody she crafts tales of songbirds, sirens and desert nomads – nuanced and layered stories which bridge the gap between past and present. Though her influences cover a broad range of genres – from French chansons and Russian folk to contemporary alt-pop and rock – her voice often draws comparisons to the likes of Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Jeff Buckley, Mary Hopkin, and early St. Vincent.

Opening for acts such as Mitski, Cautious Clay, Ondara, Rhett Miller (Old 97s), Sean Rowe, Mikaela Davis, Saint Saviour (Groove Armada), and Bill Ryder-Jones (Arctic Monkeys), she has performed at venerated venues like The Linda Performing Arts Center, Proctor’s Theatre, The Bluebird Cafe, Bowery Ballroom, Caffe Lena, and the Roundhouse Theatre in London.

She has been a finalist in numerous prestigious songwriting competitions including Telluride Troubadour Competition, Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Competition, The Great American Songwriting Contest, SolarFest’s Songwriter Showcase – and most recently the 2022 Grassy Hill New Folk Competition at Kerrville Folk Festival and winner of the 2022 Tarrytown Music Hall Rock the Hall Competition.

She has released 7 records since 2015: Operator, We Shut Our Eyes, Violets, The Early Covers, There Grows A Tree In Paradise, Love Spell – and most recently a live Joni Mitchell tribute album (now streaming everywhere). Her songs have been featured on several Spotify editorial playlists, and have garnered over 1 million streams worldwide.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/belleskinnermusic/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belle.skinner/

Website: belle-skinner.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/belleskinnermusic

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3OcX4x2