Tiny Ruins

“Remarkable songs”, “intelligent and utterly lovely” – Graham Reid, elsewhere.co.nz

To mark the release of the debut album Some Were Meant For Sea, Tiny Ruins will be embarking on a nationwide tour of the gentler venues around the country.

The songs on Some Were Meant For Sea are composed & performed by Hollie Fullbrook, following a year spent collaborating & performing internationally in which the young artist’s worldly voice & stories would connect with audiences as distant as Northern Spain & with artists including Joanna Newsom, Beach House & Holly Throsby.

Both vocally & instrumentally, Some Were Meant For Sea exists in dappled warmness: Fullbrook’s striking timbre recalling a smooth Jolie Holland & conjuring a similar natural imagery born from earth & sea. Bound by their delicate nature, her songs lay within a space & time all their own: ‘Little Notes’ a lover’s airborne ode, the impressionistic, wanting ‘Priest With Balloons’ & the beguiling ‘Running Through The Night’.

Recorded in a diminutive hall, once the local school of South Gippsland’s Morraya, Australia, Fullbrook would work with producer J Walker (Holly Throsby, CW Stoneking, Machine Translations), and between the pair, some cello (bowed and also de-tuned & plucked as a double bass), violin, percussion, piano & accordion were added to the otherwise bare-boned songs, which were all recorded entirely live, with guitar and vocals laid simultaneously.

It is a mannered album, one whose traditional arrangements & classic key are gently commanding & reminiscent of folk’s greatest storytellers: Carole King, The Unthanks & Richard Thompson. She writes with humour and fantasy of cats in hallways, journeys taking flight on moonlight, priests who float into the sky on strings of balloons.

Fullbrook was born one of three in Bristol, England, where she lived until she was ten years old. Attending the Bristol Waldorf school, she would learn the cello from a young age before moving to New Zealand, her family settling in the Waitakere Ranges of West Auckland. At 11, her visiting Grandad encouraged her to pick up her Mother's big old acoustic guitar. She wrote songs from age 14 on.

Over the past year, Tiny Ruins has performed internationally as special guest to Beach House, Ólöf Arnalds, Grand Salvo, Joanna Newsom, Holly Throsby, Alasdair Roberts, & The Middle East. The album’s New Zealand debut will be followed by these album release shows, before the album’s Australian release date of Friday July 1. Tiny Ruins is set to return to Australia for several soon to be announced headline & guest performances in July.

Event listed by LJP

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