Currently in the middle of UK dates, Fiona Bevan maybe forgiven for being somewhat confused about her identity. Prior to releasing album Talk To Strangers earlier this year, she’s been a guitarist in Poussez Posse and wrote One Direction’s Little Things with Ed Sheeran. To make sense of it all she’s made us a Playlist of “Songs for a split personality”.
Prince – If I Was Your Girlfriend
“Prince is all over my brain, all fresh and real from seeing him the other day at one of his tiny top secret London shows. I love how he utterly becomes different characters, and he’s not afraid to rock a crazily mysterious, androgynous sex appeal, from funky, dirty, growly, squealing guitar solos to a super girly falsetto.”
Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms
“This must be the only song you’ll ever hear with the lyrics Quadrehedral/ Tetrahedral but it’s anything but square. I love how it lulls you into an tripped out ethereal world, before dizzyingly thrusting you into the chantings of an insane scary cult. You never know quite where you stand.”
Yma Sumac – Chuncho
“This incredible Peruvian singer, filmstar and goddess from the 50s had an extraordinary vocal range of over four and a half octaves. In this song she effortlessly slips between singing as low as a man to higher than a bird, eerily channelling different forest spirits and creatures with inhuman roars, screams and purrs.”
Scott Walker – Plastic Palace People
“Sugary strings swirl around Scott’s gentle voice as he croons his strange psychedelic words before suddenly jumping into a spacey echo of Hurry, you’ve got to get in line/ Listen, they’re laughing in the halls/ They rip your face with lies. I love this wishful story of escaping the nagging demands of the world and floating away as a balloon, which is so dreamy and frightening.”
Radiohead – Paranoid Android
“This was the first band I discovered as a teenager that absolutely blew my mind. They are geniuses at taking you through different sound worlds within the space of three minutes – from a swingy spanishy acoustic vibe to a melancholy rain-down church-choir chorus via a full blown psycho flip out.”
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Joanna Newsom – Peach Plum Pear
“I love her cute witchy voice and absolute disregard for what anyone else is doing in pop. I love how this song sounds like her personality splitting up into multiple backing singer versions of herself – I am blue/ and unwell – a polyphonic cacophony.”
Jimi Hendrix – Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland) into Crosstown Traffic
“I try to listen to album tracks in order, not on shuffle, to understand what the artist wanted us to experience, and the context of the songs. I love the sudden, jarring jump from the dreamy messed-up advert of Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland) which rams you into Crosstown Traffic and which sounds almost like hot honking horns and sirens.”
Eartha Kitt – I Want To Be Evil
“Purring miss goody-goody prim and proper goes EVIL and it’s a lot of fun.”
Major Lazer – Get Free ft Amber of Dirty Projectors
“Crunky junky guitars meet fat euro synths meandering their way around Amber’s husky screechingly desperate narrative until her own backing vocals emerge out of the main vocal and splinter off… The electric guitar steals her vocal line and she steals the guitar part… It’s so perfectly constructed and beautiful though on the surface it seems so shambolic and fragmented.”
Patti Smith – Gloria
“There is a freedom to what Patti Smith does that is still so fresh, untouchable and unbeatable. On the album Horses, her narrative crescendos into a passionate, disconnected dialogue telling two stories like a main line into her wild mind, with the band feverishly with her every second of the way.”
For more head to Fionabevan.co.uk.
