Birmingham-born pianist Kit Richardson is making complex, unashamed pop music with a big heart and even bigger lungs. Obsessed with a plethora of diverse songwriters from Trent Reznor to Ben Folds, Kit’s eclectic sound borrows from a spectrum of genres – all tied together with her trademark “impressive falsetto” (TIMEOUT) and huge, swirling arrangements of strings, choral samples and soaring guitars. Her new self-produced EP, Love Songs in Age, is inspired by a Phillip Larkin poem of the same name, and full of stories of tedious break-up minutia, deadbeat husbands and long-distance relationships. Plus one hefty Crowded House cover.
Kit Richardson – How to Breathe Underwater
Kit Richardson is a pianist from London via Birmingham. She makes complex, sparkling alt-pop, with swirling arrangements of strings, guitars, and occasional electronics. Her new single, All Heart No Brains, is an ode to empathy, and a lamentation on hippy idealism – with a lot of pitched percussion.
Kit Richardson – How to Breathe Underwater Lyrics:
These few weeks there’s been a quiet storm,
Something shivering in my covers,
And I find nothing seems to keep me warm,
In the absence of another.
Thunder drumming from inside my chest,
Rainclouds filling up the cupboards,
All the lovers I had laid to rest,
All their fingers through the floorboards.
Too deep,
Too deep to dream,
Everything
Tastes of grenadine,
And failed attempts
at archery,
Land arrows at my feet.
I’m still trying to get myself dressed,
I’m still lying to my mother,
Toothless grinning at your new success,
Picking teeth out of the gutter.
Tell me, how’d you keep yourself from falling down?
Does your blood thicken into mortar?
Do you lay your mattress on a river bed,
And keep your head above the water?
I long
for underwhelming love.
A ride,
Without a ticket stub…
I’ve had
I said, I’ve had enough
Come by, pick up your stuff.
(She kept her songs,
They kept so little space.
The colours pleased her.
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water.
One mended when a tidy fit had seized her,
and coloured by her daughter.
So they had waited,
Til in widowhood she found them,
Looking for something else.)
