My recent work for Gigslutz has introduced me to a lot of music that I never thought I’d like.

Landes is an artist who I believed I hadn’t heard of before, but who apparently has been in my subconscious for some time. Having had her work featured in the likes of House M.D., Skins, Harry Potter and Holby City, both American and British media does appear somewhat drawn to her work, and it becomes obvious why quite quickly.

Passionate and reflective, yet also gentle and fluent, seemingly all of her most album ‘Bluebird’ yields this essence of warm background-music to galvanise any scene whether fictional or real within a character’s life with emotion.

Comparable to the likes of Fleetwood Mac and Eva Cassidy in parts, her growing success is following a formula that has evidently worked extremely well before, but this time, as indicated by its appearance in Skins and Gossip Girl, her songwriting can be enjoyed by a more diverse audience than just anybody over 35 feeling a bit empty inside.

Landes’ southern roots give a sense of character to her work, and are echoed both vocally and instrumentally (see: Bloodhound, for example), which really helps to engrave the sound in your mind. Songs such as Cry No More and Oh Brother provide a real insight into the feelings and thoughts of the artist or character in not only the lyrics, but also the delicate movement of the music itself.

Whilst you can, in fact, listen to Rhiannon or Songbird too many times, the artist captures something here that avoids that pop-py element of defining songs by loud, repetitive choruses so that you end up bored or bleeding dopamine, and instead makes each song memorable by rhythm and progressive storytelling.

It is, for that reason, unfortunately, that Landes will probably remain more of a cult classic or an artist that will remain in your iTunes library for years, occasionally appearing when shuffled, but never reaching the alternative-led ‘Top 25 Most Played’ playlist.

With the grunge and alternative scenes taking centre-place in today’s music culture, it’s sad that such an emotionally-charged lyricist is unlikely to be endorsed by the mainstream, but as a genuinely thrilling artist to discover, I wholly recommend listening to the album, which is due for release on March 3rd 2014.

4/5

James Reynolds

@ReynoldsAuthor