By Lydia Cross | September 2013
The song’s hook is deceptively simple: “You held me like a heavy hand / I let you, I let you.” It’s a gut-punch of post-relationship fatigue, set to a beat that stumbles like a heart missing a few valves.
For now, 2013 belongs to the quiet ones. And no one is quieter—or louder—than her. Listen: “Heavy Hand” by Candice Demellza is available on Glass Wax Records / Bandcamp.
“Next year. Maybe.”
The buzz is real but contained. She played her first London headline show last month at The Shacklewell Arms—a sweaty, sold-out room where she performed barefoot, looped her own breaths into a pedal, and nearly cried during the last verse of the unreleased track “Holloway.” NME called it “fragile and furious.” The Guardian listed her as one of “10 new artists for autumn.” But the major labels, so far, have been kept at arm’s length.
There’s a certain alchemy to the best kind of debut. The kind that doesn’t announce itself with a billboard or a buzz single, but instead travels on a USB stick passed between friends or a late-night SoundCloud link buried under a cryptic caption. That’s how Candice Demellza arrived this past spring. And if you haven’t heard the name yet, you will before the leaves fall.
As we part ways on a drizzly Kingsland Road, she pulls out a battered notebook. On the cover, scrawled in silver Sharpie: Candice Demellza – LP1 (do not steal). She catches me looking and winks.
“They want a single. A ‘moment.’ But I don’t write moments,” she says, finishing her coffee. “I write the ten minutes after the moment ends.”
