Martha Skye Murphy is an industry veteran, even if she doesn’t look like it. She is necessarily so, having collaborated with Nick Cave since she was a child. At the age of 9, Martha Skye Murphy sang on the soundtrack of John Hillcoat’s 2005 film ‘Deadline’, and then in 2013, she continued working with Cave, singing backing vocals on his 2013 album, ‘Push the Sky Away’.
Born in South London, Skye Murphy comes from a family of artists: her father is a photographer and her mother a designer. And, perhaps because of her family’s love of art, she has not rushed to publish her first album, which came out this year.
On ‘Um’ Skye Murphy delivers a collection of intense piano-driven songs that play with jazz, chamber pop and electronica. Skye Murphy’s high-pitched, whispery voice is reminiscent of Anja Garbarek, but the music can be linked to Julia Holter, rather.
One of the standout tracks on ‘Um’ is ‘Need’, a gorgeous ballad that encapsulates the album’s sound with its dark atmosphere, mixing piano and country-like guitars, then adding a strange synth arrangement that plummets in. ‘Need’ is avant-garde folk, made in our time.
In collaboration with singer Roy Montgomery, Skye Murphy sings about love as a necessity on ‘Need’. While the verses of ‘Need’ draw on everyday scenes (“you play with my hair”, “I’m sitting in the surgeon’s chair”, “you eat lamb”) or invite reflection… or confusion (“I think you want a baby”, “I break things beautifully”), the chorus is based on a chiasmus that says “I need you to need me to need you” and, in its simplicity, it couldn’t be more romantic.
