When folk pop disdains immobility and dresses up as contemporary, things like this happen: the British Birdy and the Irish James Vincent McMorrow share the bill with absolute naturalness, twinned by their ability to compose songs like suns.
Attention: Jasmine Lucilla Elizabeth Jennifer Van den Bogaerde (the real name is a bit of a mouthful) is Birdy (much better that way, isn't it?), a 28-year-old British pop star who became a pop star practically overnight. It all started with a cover of Bon Iver's "Skinny Love" in 2011, when she was just 15 years old. It was the song that put the artist, who calls herself that because of how little she ate as a child, in the spotlight. Her parents, a writer and pianist respectively, made up for it by playing her Beatles, George Michael, Keane and some other classical music records at home, and from all that hodgepodge of influences could only be born albums like "Portraits" (2023), a fifth work that powerfully recalls Kate Bush, David Bowie and other pop stars of the eighties.
Irish songwriter and singer James Vincent McMorrow is a lucky guy. But luck you also have to look for it. He enjoyed international projection since his first album was acclaimed at the European Border Breakers in 2012, and a couple of years later he managed to get one of his songs, "Glacier", played in every Spanish home thanks to its inclusion in the Christmas lottery ad, but he never really wanted to be a big star. His folk pop, which doesn't lose sight of the modernity of shiny keyboards or a good synthetic arrangement, just needs to be nourished by the small pleasures of life. That's why his sixth album, "The Less I Knew" (2022), was a return to his roots that tried to make peace with his status as a renowned musician and quiet family man.
