Listen: Eliza Shaddad - "Waters"

01 May 2014, 20:10 | Written by Jon Putnam

(Tracks)

(Eliza Shaddad)

Confidence oozes from the taut and tenacious performances of London singer-songwriter Eliza Shaddad, undoubtedly a product of her days paying dues busking in Shoreditch. Her multi-cultural lineage – Shaddad is of Sudanese and Scottish ancestry – lends her material an air of exoticism that helps set her apart from the scores of other folk-tinged would-be troubadours.

Shaddad’s latest single, “Waters”, our second taste of her upcoming EP of the same name, has her riding atop an tom-tom led martial drum beat, she matching the tension with her percussive guitar strums. It’s a marked departure from introductory single, “You For Me”s, menacing languidness.

Vocally, Shaddad exhilaratingly toes the edge of unbridled fury, staring down the reaper’s nose, exclaiming, “I see death / he does not bother me”. While she’s content to go so far as welcoming the waters to engulf her, we should be at least in allowing Shaddad’s stirring melancholy to wash over us.

The Waters EP is out 16 June via Beatnik and Shaddad will be playing The Great Escape festival in Brighton on 8 May and the festival’s Alternative Escape on 10 May.