Into the Diamond Sun is the first full-length release from all-girl
Liverpudlian three-piece Stealing Sheep. This debut effort features
lashing of lo-fi psyche folk, with an intriguing tinge of drone-ridden,
olde worlde counterpoint, rhythm and harmonies. The album follows on
from their debut EP I am the Rain, released in 2011, along with a
growing degree of well-deserved media attention.
This album, like all of Stealing Sheep’s work, is very vocal heavy.
Beautifully inter-laced harmonies, fixed in ancient musical modes drift
through each track in a way that is hypnotic, ethereal, and at times
even haunting. Each individual voice has its own personality and
opportunity to shine through, but the collectivism of the trio’s voices,
creating complex, otherworldly harmonies, is where the real strength of
Stealing Sheep’s music lies. Polyphonic madrigals cross the ears,
making Into the Diamond Sun feel ancient, strange, eerie and
captivating. Think Au Revoir Simone meets the Medieval Babes and you are
perhaps getting some way towards Stealing Sheep’s mysterious vocal
style.
Nowhere in the album is this vocal style more evident than in the recent single Shut Eye,
which was so famously used in a recent advert for Hollyoaks. The tracks
placement in the advert will certainly help the girls on their way to
fame and fortune, but it must be said that the advert itself astutely
enhanced the qualities of Stealing Sheep’s music. Certainly, this is
music well suited to wooded glades, billowing white dresses and fairy
lights.
Into the Diamond Sun is not simply about beautiful voices, however.
The entire soundscape these ladies create – the collective layers of
sound offered throughout this album are both evocative and intriguing.
Stealing Sheep have clear musical intentions, using interesting, apt and
quirky timbres to create a wistful and intelligent backdrop to the
girl’s vocals. Organic and electronic sounds mix to make this album
fresh and vibrant; tabers, bodhrans and frame drums create thick rhythms
alongside effervescent synths. These girls are clearly very clever,
musically intuitive, and instrumentally competent.
Into the Diamond Light offers both accessible and eccentric
psyche-folk, which is charismatic, hazy and evocative – the perfect
soundtrack to late summer.
See this at MTTM at: http://www.morethanthemusic.co.uk/reviews/album-reviews/stealing-sheep-into-the-diamond-sun/
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