Today I bought a promo copy of Mechanical Bride's new Black Skeleton Sea EP, the sublime follow-up to her In The Throes EP and cover of Rhianna's Umbrella, after seeing it in there last week. Predictably it was still in the smaller branch this afternoon, as the type of people who go in there aren't the type to listen to Lauren Doss' delicate music (not that I'm generalising), think more New Order and Joy Division. I don't quite understand how more people haven't heard of her though, Lauren has been making music for a number of years now and has also been signed to Transgressive since 2006 at the least. How curious the world is.
Doss has gone from strength to strength and her most recent release is a tumbling, rolling and turning three song masterpiece. The Final is imaginably the last track on the EP and leaves the starting block tenderly and eases itself into a symphony of violins and piano bars, accompanied by Doss' pure vocals that are then strengthened even more so by a male voice that creates an almost fragile atmosphere around the song.
Seaworld is the first track and sets the tone perfectly. The glockenspiel becomes a simple underpinning to the song, joined by cristalline humming and oo-ing and a repeated, reoccuring "We find worlds inside", and the tragic violin melody holds your attention seamlessly. It's a heart-breaking EP.
A favourite song of mine by Mechanical Bride is definitely Poor Boy (from In The Throes), in which Doss' voice is pushed high above the rooftops and then gracefully falls to the ground once again. Her lyrical ability is fantastic too, another element that shines through in Poor Boy.
There aren't any shows on the horizon unfortunately, but Lauren has had the pleasure of performing with acts such as Bat For Lashes and Johnny Flynn.
Listen to Poor Boy here.
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