OnesToWatch: Smoke Fairies

SMOKE FAIRIES
Words: Jessica Hazel

Jessica and Katharine are two best friends who met on the first day of secondary school. Upon joining the school choir they realised that Jessica’s alto and Katharine’s soprano complimented one another in a seamless and hauntingly beautiful manner. A few years on and the duo, now known as Smoke Fairies, are about to release their first album ‘Through Low Light And Trees’ – a record which combines eccentric English folklore with lonesome, bluesy Americana. As teenagers, Katharine would often go round to Jessica’s house to delve into her Mum’s vinyl collection. “It was all stuff like Crosby, Stills and Nash, Grateful Dead, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell” she states. “There was a distinct sound which no one uses now.” When people started telling the girls that they needed to get ‘proper jobs’, they upped and hopped across the pond to places like New Orleans and Vancouver where all- American sounds such as slide guitar became intrinsic to the Smoke Fairies style; “Space is what we were craving,” Katharine tells us. “You can’t find that when you have taken a normal path.” Another key moment came when they met Jack White. Having heard a rumour that he was going to be at a bar, Katharine turned up and persuaded the DJ to play their record. “I went up to Jack and said ‘this is my band, it’s a duo’ and he said ‘a duo – well that’s never going to work’.” A year later Jack called them up and asked them to support him at his gig at the HMV Forum. “While we were in the dressing room he came in and asked if we wanted to record with him in Nashville. We went over and recorded ‘River Song’ – he bursts in at the end of the song with a brilliant Jack White guitar solo.” The resultant album – the rest of which was recorded at Sawmills in Cornwall – is 11 tracks of eerie melodies and ghostly harmonies. Songs such as ‘Strange Moon Rising’ hark back to the hazy bohemia of the 70’s whereas tracks like ‘Feeling In Turning Blue’ and ‘Storm Song’ contain a loneliness and regret which speaks way beyond the girl’s years. Melancholy, dark, foreboding and magical, Smoke Fairies are the perfect Autumnal accompaniment.

‘Through Low Light And Trees’ is released on V2 on September 6th.