Hailing originally from Aberdeen but now based in London, Olivia Rafferty has just released her debut EP Hurricane. Song writing is something she feels very passionate about. Her granddad’s cousin was the songwriter Gerry Rafferty. He was close enough to the family that Olivia felt a connection but removed enough that she never got to meet him. His music serves as a reminder for Olivia that song writing runs in her blood.
The songs on Hurricane centre around break-ups and the soul-searching that comes after. The lyrics are confessional, the music is wide and emotive, yet is spattered with intimate details such as mandolin plucks or field recordings of train journeys. Production began in a small home-studio, yet when the recording process was halted due to Covid, Olivia then finished the production of the record by linking up remotely with a series of co-producers and collaborators from the UK and US.
Watch the accompanying video for EP track ‘Grace’ – Written late one evening, ‘Grace’ came straight after the events it describes: a walk home in the dark. The track is an exploration of self-image through others’ eyes. “It’s about latching on to other people’s positive view of you, so you can use it when you can’t summon your own self-confidence,” Olivia explains.
The song retains a lot of the fidelity of the original demo — the scratch vocals and the ambling piano that serves as an emotional undercurrent — and there are field recordings of trains in South East London that haunt the song as well. “I wanted to create this real sense of place with “Grace,” Olivia says, “The song came to me on a walk home from a friend’s apartment and I wanted to put the listener in that exact same location.” The rest of the track came together through home studio sessions and emailing music friends over lockdown — mixing the track was Brighton indie musician Liance (James Li), who released an album earlier this year.
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Photo Credit: Ben Kite