Following a string of magnificent releases, Thallo returns with a haunting new single entitled ‘Carry Me’, a rich, swelling piece of alt-pop invested with Thallo’s ethereal vocals and layered with spindly guitars and woodwind, it’s inspired by her personal experience of immobility. We are debuting it below.
‘Carry Me’ is first taster from Thallo’s forthcoming English/Welsh language Crescent EP which follows on 28 October 2022. The EP is themed around Thallo’s own story of chronic pain, which at the time of writing Carry On left her often unable to stand or walk after suffering unexplainable and debilitating knee pain.
As she expands “I wrote ‘Carry On’ in lockdown which was a strange time of losing my work, social life, and then what felt like losing my body yo constant pain. I felt completely hopeless and saw a familiar wave of depression approaching. ‘Carry Me’ is about this exact moment of realisation and panic.”
Musically, Carry Me was initially inspired by Thallo wanting to write “a dark ukulele song,” and ended up being improvised due to the pain Thallo was experiencing, making it, as Thallo says, “the fastest song I ever wrote”. The chords, lyrics and vocal melody were done in one take, and the arrangement created after by layering clarinets and synths before sharing the other parts of the instruments in the studio. The effect is a glorious, rich rush of multi-
instrumentation and Thallo’s sublime vocal whirling in a jazz-infused dream before it’s emotive crescendo.
Thallo is Elin Edwards, based between her homelands of Gwynedd, North Wales, and London. In 2021 she released three singles, Mêl, Pressed and Preserved and The Water, receiving much early acclaim with an invite to perform at The Great Escape and play SXSW (the latter reschedule for 2023 due to her immobility). At radio she has fans in Sian Eleri (Radio 1 The Chillest Show) and Huw Stephens (BBC Wales )
