Features Ren Harvieu

One of the first things you should try and teach yourself if you’re ever going to be objective is to fight your gut instinct. No matter what your body is telling you, do not listen, ride the waves of nausea, just try to remain impartial. Keep that in mind when you first watch Ren Harvieu’s first video on YouTube. It might be the dark hair chanteuse that you see first and, if so, keep your eyes fixed there. The chances are, though, you’ll be drawn to a rather more familiar face in that of James Allen – he of Glasvegas, a band so bland it’s offensive. Try not to turn off; just listen to the audio if you want – it’s worth it.

For some, this might all be a bit too Radio 2, and it’s hard to deny that there are certainly moments where you wonder whether this is a bit too Norah Jones to truly be considered cool. But appealing to hipsters has probably never been the point; there’s no need to hide under layers of reverb when you’ve got a voice quite as impressive and emotive as this. Indeed, throughout her cover of Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’, it’s telling that her tone says more than the words that she’s singing, the weight of a broken heart barely concealed as she powers through, languid yet pitch perfect to the last.

Commercial radio can broadly be considered the devil, promoting lost common denominator pop instead of anything even vaguely challenging. The programmers might’ve thought they were taking a step in the right direction by playlisting ‘Daddy’s Gone’ a few years ago, despite all evidence to the contrary. Hopefully they can start making amends by giving Ren Harvieu and her anachronistic warbling the audience that it so ripely deserves.