From the opening chords of Reckless I was hooked, a combination of Dan Messore’s intuitive and visual guitar playing which builds to a soulful crescendo as he follows Jo Messore’s vocals, a fragile and intimate opening before building to a soulful pinnacle of strength. Together, they make up electric folk-pop duo Sky Barkers whose debut EP is to be released on one of our favourite record labels next month – Cambrian Records. If this first single is anything to go by then we are in for a real treat, there’s a real sense of shared creativity and strength that’s impossible not to be moved by in just this one track. Looking at their bio, they’ve been on quite a journey.
Dan and Jo live between Atlantic West Wales and the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, where they write, searching for individualism and evolving identity in their music. Of Reckless, their lead single, they tell us:
“Reckless was written a few years ago, from our home in a very windy caravan in a field by the cliffs of west west west wales. Despite travelling and living in beautiful parts of this globe – that is where my heart resides.”
And as for the name?
“The name Sky Barkers is a homage to a certain dog, who I never knew the name of. She was a beautiful blue collie, and she would run up and down the field, barking at the sky with such certainty. I always wondered what she could see that I couldn’t. I figured that level of wild commitment, to something you know to be true, was admirable and worth naming a band after! Either that or she was just mad…but isn’t that what they always say?”
The single ‘Reckless’ is released 28th February and their Ep, ‘Extended Play’ is released 27th March.
Sky Barkers will be touring in 2020, with plans to release a debut album the following autumn. ‘This human life is all broken up and Sky Barkers is an invitation to lift your head to the sky and howl your wild heart out’.
Pre-Order it here: https://cambrianrecords.bandcamp.com/album/extended-play