2013 Candice Demellza Review

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.

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. 2013 candice demellza

At just twenty-two, the Cape Town-born, London-based singer and producer occupies a strange, thrilling limbo. Her voice—a husky, almost detached alto that can crack open into something disarmingly vulnerable—feels both out of time and perfectly suited for the anxious, glittering early 2010s. Comparisons to a young Beth Gibbons or a less polished FKA twigs are inevitable, but Demellza shrugs them off with a quiet smile. “I just wanted to make songs that sounded like the inside of a rainy car window,” she told me over coffee in Hackney. “Pretty, but smeared.” The song’s hook is deceptively simple: “You held

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. At just twenty-two, the Cape Town-born, London-based singer