Fiona Lucia is an adroit songwriter with a unique sound that ranges from folk to soul and jazz. Her versatility and orchestration approach recall the likes of Bjork, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and ANOHNI all at once—though the sound is entirely her own.
Her EP, Phoenix Waltz, offers a panoply of turns: full of jazzy riffs, subtle phrasing, and quiet yearning. Throughout, a full-bodied voice also belies remarkable restraint and fragility, à la Billie Holiday or Amy Winehouse.
Fire marks a powerful opening, with vocal echoes of Aretha Franklin at her punchiest. Hang on a While is more ponderous, bares itself to the void with searching, ANOHNI-esque harmonies. The song rests in the margins before finally hinting at resolution and the sense that everything will be alright. It’s a ruminative, hopeful song for the dark times.
In Sorry, a slick organ slinks alongside another powerful vocal, while the stark, vulnerable lyrics evoke late-Simone. The words build into the song’s rhythm, making each crushing syllable count in her arresting line: “I never meant to choke you with the tears I never cried”.
Lucia’s voice is both unique and intuitive, as though she’s been doing this stuff for years. She’s quite hard to place in the Irish scene—somewhere between Zoe Basha, I Have A Tribe, Lisa Hannigan and Jess Kav, a soul singer with folky, indie instincts. The EP was recorded at the great Black Mountain Studios by Ken McCabe (Patrick Stefan, Danny Groenland, Rob de Boer) and feels very vibey—a safe space for spinning harmonies and expressing complex and inarticulable emotions. And the sound is so intimate; you can practically picture the room where the songs were recorded. Lucia’s is an analogue, acoustic sound—with drums, bass, piano and violins.
I Need to Run flits from a rhythmic opening to an orchestral outro. The D’Angelo-esque harmonies in the choruses are zany and playful, yet also darken the mood. The song’s startling outro, which comes out of nowhere, is an affirmative gust of wind: “Till all is well again […] Till all is well again”. The healing, spiritual motif, deftly layered with strings (recorded by Lucia herself), hints at fleeting transcendence, birds rising—the other side of suffering.
The title track is a quietly epic ballad that twists inexorably through the past. Trauma rears its head just as it slips away, like a memory that won’t quite settle. All in all, it presents a magnificent finale that both encapsulates and expands on the EP’s abiding yearning and search for peace after suffering. The strings soar like an ambivalent murmuration, poised between chaos and salvation.
Phoenix Waltz is a strikingly intimate debut defined by trust—in voice, in feeling, and in the listener. Lucia’s songs remain mostly unresolved, just as they quiver playfully and agonisingly between containment and release. It is an embracing, at times heart-wrenching listen. The final track is hypnotic, layered and beguiling—and warrants many a re-listen.
Pheonix Waltz (January 16th, 2026) Hope Monger Records
Order via Bandcamp: https://fionalucia.bandcamp.com/album/phoenix-waltz