Rachel Sermanni - Under Mountains

Rachel Sermanni - Like Laura Marling, twenty-year-old Scottish neo-folk songwriter Sermanni has won praise for her exceptionally mature and artful music, taking acoustic melodies and expanding them into cinematic pieces of uncommon depth...debut album combines new songs with tracks pulled from singles and Sermanni's Black Currents EP released earlier this year, an auspicious introduction produced by Ian Grimble (Travis, Daughter) and promoted via the excellent Communion family of artists co-managed by Mumford and Sons Ben Lovett // Release: Under Mountains (September 19, U.K.) // Sounds like: Sermanni finds that sweet spot between refreshingly unadorned directness and artful ornamentation, quiet laments and soaring orchestration all centered around a darting sand-textured voice that moves from tumbling lyricism to moments of serene, sweeping grandeur...

Rachel Sermanni - "Eggshells" (from Under Mountains)

Rachel Sermanni - "Breathe Easy" (from Under Mountains)

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Watch: Rachel Sermanni - "Eggshells"

Scottish neo-folk songwriter Rachel Sermanni just keeps getting better and better. New single "Eggshells" arrives on the heels of her January Black Currents EP, a song that won't diminish the Laura Marling comparisons but certainly puts the 19-year-old songwriter in a position of carving out her own acoustic persona. As we noted in our earlier post, "Sermanni finds that sweet spot between refreshingly unadorned directness and artful ornamentation, quiet laments and soaring orchestration all centered around a darting sand-textured voice that moves from tumbling lyricism to moments of serene, sweeping grandeur..." "Eggshells", true to it's title, is a more delicate affair than her more experimental Black Currents jam, a sweetly serene, chamber-folk melody carried lightly by Sermanni's cool, breathy vocals. No word on a U.S. signing, but the new single is available digitally this week.

Rachel Sermanni - "Eggshells"

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RADAR: Rachel Sermanni

Nineteen-year-old Scottish neo-folk songwriter Rachel Sermanni has been on the DC RADAR for a few months now but she came to mind just today as we were pondering the new Laura Marling album out next week. Both share an understated approach to writing and performing, word and notes carefully chosen and then displayed with a minimum of fanfare. We've fallen hard for the lovely "Eggshells" but it's the intriguing "Pablo's City" from her new limited-edition 4-track EP Bothy Sessions that shows us where Sermanni is coming from -- and where she's capable of going. Shifting from folk lament to orchestrated jazzy cabaret ditty (and then back again), Sermanni sings "I am seeing everything for the first time". Watch the video for a live-in-the-flat version of "Song for a Fox" after the jump.

Rachel Sermanni - "Eggshells"

Rachel Sermanni - "Pablo's City" (from Bothy Sessions)

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