Leerone

There's just something good about Leerone. Her music is benevolent music (I've kicked on about this for ages, I know):

here, for instance (the comment will be quite funny)

and here, of course...

and in the same way as, say,  Julianna Barwick is benevolent music

(this place is nothing if not a recycling shed)

But... an age away, in 2008, Leerone sent me a beautiful package of CDs and stuff and it just struck a chord at a weird time in my life. Now, four years later, it seems improbable that more people haven't heard of her... I was more or less sure she was going to be big, and still am. She should be big, should be just how pop sounds now. I don't know, it's kind of annoying that she isn't more famous, not because there's a message there that needs to be heard particularly or because this is necessary music per se but just because... the world would have gotten a little better if she'd been more famous. 

And, well, it hasn't. 

I can't describe it; it's a minor obsession... and this was always supposed to be about those. Why her, rather than lots of similar singer-songwriters? I can't say; it's  a tone that elevates this music above the forced and the strained and the self conscious... this music simply feels heartfelt in a way that most music like this tries to sound heartfelt. She's not going for a market: not particularly indie, not slick pop, not homegrown or overly soulful, not homespun or....

She believes in every song (I can't speak for the sleeves) and feels she's on the right path, even if Fame and it's impurities haven't gotten to her yet, even if she knows that, one day, her eye will be bewitched... You just get the feeling that that abasement isn't the whole point of the song... she's not dying to die a quick Popdeath or waiting for a Syco drone to rebirth her. Her songs don't seem even aspirational, in that sense and perhaps they are doomed because of it but... Fuck it; buy them and love that they exist in coffee bars and open mics and small venues all across town.

They just feel like good would sound.