Ellen Arthur Blyth

Ellen Arthur is a Dublin based singer songwriter, with throw backs to Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee, and contemporary hints of Winehouse, Melua and Lana Del Ray. Nine is her first studio album: pop, jazz, and soul infused. Influences include old jazz recordings when vocal was queen, coupled with nineties Spice Girls fandom and a love of divas. Bold lyrics of loves lost and found serve as a side dish for what at heart is an album about addiction and recovery in the pursuit of dreams. Recorded in Hell Fire Studios, Dublin and produced by Alex Borwick, of Niamh Reagan and Grouse Lodge fame, the impressive sound walks a tightrope of consonance and dissonance, nostalgia and joy, resulting in a finely poised drama of soft, lilting melody and haunting wistfulness. The vocal, at once resonant, is at times achingly honest and captivates from beginning to end.

Born in Dublin, the youngest of nine, in a house where those who shouted loudest ate most, Arthur learned how to sing for her supper early.

Dragged out of bed, dusted down, slung into a polyester frock, her early forays into musical performance consisted of pitch perfect renditions of Any Dream Will Do to family friends. But as success followed the clan, friends soon turned to ambassadors, heads of state, Hollywood actors and other visiting dignitaries who were passing through. At 16 she made the live finals of Ireland’s ‘You’re a Star’ but lost her voice.