Understated

On stage at the Green Door Store in Brighton last night, everything about Nadia Reid’s set was intimate and understated: she asked for the stage lights to be dimmed an inch, for the monitors to be turned down a little and for the audience to shuffle a step nearer the stage to let the rest of the sold-out crowd in at the back of this tiny venue. And then there was the most intimate thing of all: Reid’s voice. Crystal clear and unaffected, she sings with a beauty and a purity that renders her folk/country songs tender and emotional without recourse to histrionics.

I was alerted to this young singer/songwriter’s debut album, Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs, early last year when it was given a glowing review in Mojo magazine. It was only when it failed to figure in 2016 ‘best of’ lists that I discovered that it had been released the previous year; further digging revealed that it actually came out in 2014 in her home country of New Zealand. That she had made such an assured and mature debut at the ridiculously young age of 23 was further evidence of her prodigious talent. Added to this, her admission that she took seven years to write the songs for the album meant that her debut was the sound of her whole adult life: small wonder it is such a considered and confident album.

With Reid on acoustic guitar and Sam Taylor accompanying her on electric guitar, they replicated the haunting Appalachian sound of the album superbly: Holy Low was dedicated to a baby in the audience (yes, a tiny baby) who was born to the sound of Reid’s songs and the sublime Ruby (“Where did my love go? He was the sailor of my ship”) was played at the audience’s request. Even though they were performing as a duo – it is financially prohibitive to bring the whole band over from New Zealand, Taylor told us when we chatted to him after the gig – rockier tracks, such as Reaching Through, were given full rein. The title track from the new album, Preservation, was an indication that the new songs are just as ethereal and, with her material attracting a lot of airplay on 6 Music, she may not be able to remain understated for much longer.

Preservation is released on Basin Rock on 3rd March.