My name’s Rosie Frater-Taylor (RFT for short), I’m a singer-songwriter / guitarist from London. I love blurring genres. I’d say my music is a mix of jazz, folk, pop & rock reminiscent of a lot of old music (the folk/jazz) with a contemporary touch (neo-soul/indie-rock).
I wrote Featherweight, not about featherweight boxing in the literal sense! But, to explore some more pop-rock sounds/textures and to have a “heavier touch” vocally and guitar-wise on some songs. Conceptually, the album examines my relationship with various emotions, themes and labels: strength, love, anger, gender, femininity and more.
The word featherweight is self-contradictory. As humans we feel pressure to “choose a lane”, to define ourselves and fit in. I’ve found that this creates great internal conflicts: feminine vs. masculine, loud vs. quiet, hard vs. soft, introverted vs. extroverted, rock vs. jazz… So, I think it’s an album about artistic freedom. I want to feel free to be all of those things (or none) at the same time, depending on the day!
I’m a very emotional writer. I look for chords, lyrics and ideas that touch my heart in a positive or sometimes painful way. I think there are a lot of romantic themes in Featherweight, precisely because of the life experiences that surround the album, but I would say it’s more sensitive or emotional than romantic, thematically.
I love singer-songwriters, more often than not, ones who were famous more than 25 years ago making full-length albums with longer songs: PJ Harvey, Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jeff Buckley, Prince, Sting.
Now, I think there are fewer artists who really dedicate themselves to the art and craft of writing songs, as if every part of the song has to be the chorus *sigh*! There are some amazing modern songwriters: Willow, Madison Cunningham, Becca Stevens, Margaret Glaspy to name a few, but they often slip under the radar I think. All are worthy of an influence-credit on Featherweight!
I usually start with the guitar for my songs, where I can access catchy riffs and chords to then inspire a melody and lyrics. I spend a lot of time layering my demos with lots of different ideas. I would say it’s all pretty fast up to this point and I try to follow my nose as much as possible.
Featherweight has taken on a whole new life in terms of production… I realised through trial and error that I wanted to take some songs to a bold place production-wise and so creating those rich atmospheres, sound worlds and arrangements required a lot of refining, reworking and honing, especially for songs like “Give & Take”.
Jazz has been a big part of my life for years. I even studied jazz guitar at the Royal Academy of Music. It opened my ear and my mind to a level of skill in songwriting, performing and composing that I don’t think is matched by any other genre.
I learned the jazz tradition as a teenager, but now it’s just a framework that I think I draw on to write songs. Don’t get me wrong, I feel very lucky to have had the time to study it, but I wouldn’t call the music I make jazz.
My live band is Tom Potter (drums) and Dave Edwards (bass), who feature heavily on the new album, as well as Rob Mullarkey (bass), whose former band Brotherly is one of my faves. The album was recorded entirely as a trio, which has become my favourite lineup to play with.
I worked with: Tommaso Colliva, Lewis Moody, Chris Hyson and Shuta Shinoda, who contributed a lot to the engineering and sound of the album, and also with the mix engineer Alex Kilpartrick – very grateful to have been able to work with all these crazy dudes!
Listen to Featherweight below and stream it everywhere else here.
Words by Rosie Frater-Taylor // Follow her on Instagram + YouTube
