Zoe Graham

Zoe Graham writes songs that sound like doing push-ups on the moon: heavy, but with an unmistakably light touch. Hers is a velvet voice, occasionally back-brushed.

As a young musician, born and raised in Glasgow, Zoe “did everything”: she formed bands, joined bands, played the fiddle, hit up open mics, and was once tricked into attending a line dancing class. She wrote and gigged relentlessly. Her folkish beginnings still sing through in a penchant for story-led songwriting, and a vocal range that spans the delicate and disaster-struck — but Zoe’s voice is now bedded in a broader sonic palette, and guided by close collaboration with trusted musical friends.

Zoe draws influence from St Vincent (Daddy’s Home was a regular backing sound during TENT writing sessions), Kate Bush (she shares a knack for catch-you-off-guard choruses with the ‘80s icon), and Beck (“he’s very free as a songwriter; everything’s thought through, but it’s not painstaking”). She leans on David Bowie’s advice not to stay grounded in your deep pool of ideas, but rather to push up and off, and let your toes just brush the floor from time to time.

TENT

TENT is the sound of Zoe writing out of the rut. It has all the intimacy and vulnerability of the therapist’s chaise longue, but with the door flung wide open for others to listen in. Guitars curdle with loungy synths and tautly machined drums. The title is part open and perpetually-shifting acronym (The Eternal Navigation of Truth, or TEN songs about Therapy) and part metaphor for the mixture of exposure and safety from the outside world that sleeping under canvas provides. “That’s kind of what this journey has felt like,” Zoe says.