This is Laura

For nearly 18 months, North London duo This is Laura have been charming, beguiling and wooing audiences from Primrose Hill to Paris. Centred around 21-year-olds Kitty Dalton and Sarah Gavin, This is Laura are a velvet-glove take on baroque folk and brittle blues, a strikingly original third way between the femme grit of PJ Harvey and the cats-cradle perplexities of CocoRosie and A Hawk And A Hacksaw. They can reduce unsuspected men and women to tears by dint of their sea-shanty, tinderbox of soul-fuelled delights. And while T.i.l maybe a duo, they never do anything by halves. They also have a bit of history. Kitty and Sarah have been writing music together for seven years, they used to be in an all-girl punk outfit at school before experimenting with an electro-rap. After collecting a junk shop’s worth of curio instruments – rare accordions, battered fiddles, cellos and a harp – they’ve spent two years carefully (and we really do mean carefully) writing, rehearsing and recruiting band members to flesh out their moon-lit vision. The now includes Danny Lewis playing drums, Bridget Dalton on bass and Ben Kempson playing trumpet. T.i.l, you see, are the sound of nocturnal heartache and regret, wonder and longing but free of all the done-to-death clichés. After all, this is a band that can turn Slipknot’s ‘Wait and Bleed’ into a delicate thing of sensitivity and beauty. It has to be heard to be believed, but is only one moment among many that causes conversations to slow down, glasses to stop clinking and hearts to gravitate to their spectral, magical pull. Quite simply, they are one of London’s most alluring live bands right now.
Neil Davenport - Time Out Magazine ..