Sentimental, melancholic and euphoric all at once, Delilah Montagu knows how to turn simplicity into hard-hitting ballads. Fragile as spun sugar and pretty much just as sweet.
Her vocal debut was actually on Black Coffee and David Guetta’s “Drive” – the surprise collab which dropped a year ago – and her lilting, although lyrically cliche vocal, shines within the finely produced pop-house net of the two wildfire producers.
She’s quick to prove her talent truly lies in the simpler stuff though. She’s 21, fresh off the back of a London residency and a flurry of festival and intimate live show dates around the UK.
She’s got a kind of indigo-child-flair. A young face with an old soul and the kind of easy worldly advocacy of Joni Mitchell and Carol King – both of whom she eagerly cites among her influences.
Her’s is a gentle sound. Stripped right down to the rawness from where her talent actually unfurls. She’s teamed up with The Vaccines and Tom Odell. This girl has a lot going for her.
For anyone whose ever grappled with the razor-claw clutches of unrequited love, “Temptation” unpacks every unrealistic facet of the experience with feather-light subtlety.
It’s “Gold” you’ll want to watch out for though – that and In Gold, her freshly dropped debut EP. City-lit evening streets, striking and subtle all at once: this is an ode to requited love this time around – along with her awareness of it’s potential to crumble at any second. Thank goodness for that.
She effortlessly straddles the line between over-told stories and their need to be heard again, packaged a little differently – with post-modern grace and a whole lot of benign ambition.
