SOAK – Bandwidth

KEXP Presents: SOAK

Bella Pham — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:36:00 +0000

At just 19, Bridie Monds-Watson, a.k.a. SOAK, seems to handle success with modest and casual confidence. Her career has taken off quickly, from writing songs in the basement of her home in Derry, Northern Ireland, to flying from country to country performing at music festivals — including Glastonbury this past summer.

Monds-Watson’s success isn’t hard to understand. There’s a quality to her raspy, yet delicate voice that suggests wisdom well beyond her years. Her voice conveys many emotions at once: vulnerability, earnestness, sadness, hunger. SOAK takes listeners to another place with her expressive, poetic lyrics, as she fills the room with raw, stripped-down renditions of songs from her debut album, Before We Forgot How To Dream. Watch her perform “B a noBody” here.

SET LIST

“B a noBody”

Watch SOAK’s full performance on KEXP’s YouTube channel.

SOAK: Tiny Desk Concert

Bob Boilen — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 10:59:00 +0000

The opening line of SOAK‘s debut album — “A teenage heart is an unguided dart” — contains the first words I heard from 19-year-old singer-songwriter Bridie Monds-Watson. Now, she’s bringing that fragile, pure, thickly Irish-accented voice to the Tiny Desk.

Before We Forgot How To Dream, SOAK’s debut, is one of my favorite albums of 2015. Monds-Watson’s songs are about growing up and trying to understand adults and friends and life; though they’re quiet, they aren’t dour. They can be funny and smart, atmospheric and delicate — so much more than might be expected from a lone Irish teenager with an acoustic guitar.

Set List

“Sea Creatures”
“B a noBody”
“Wait”

Credits

Producers: Bob Boilen, Morgan Walker; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Morgan Walker, Lani Milton; Assistant Producer: Mina Tavakoli; photo by Lydia Thompson/NPR

First Listen: SOAK, ‘Before We Forgot How To Dream’

Stephen Thompson — Sun, 24 May 2015 23:03:00 +0000

The first words Bridie Monds-Watson sings on her debut album double as a tidy thesis statement: “A teenage heart is an unguided dart.” The Irish singer-songwriter, who records under the name SOAK, made Before We Forgot How To Dream while she was still 18 — some of these songs date back to her early teens — so she knows whereof she speaks.

This is, to state the obvious, a coming-of-age album, as Monds-Watson chronicles youthful alienation (“Sea Creatures”), anxiety and shyness (“B a nobody”), and the anguish of her parents’ divorce (“Blud”) alongside more generalized ruminations on feeling ill-at-ease and at a crossroads. She sings and writes as if she’s spent much of her life living inside her own head, and yet there’s also an ambitious, idiosyncratic quality to Before We Forgot How To Dream that allows it to feel more sweeping in scope. At times, SOAK’s origins feel more Icelandic than Irish, as Monds-Watson achieves Bjork-like otherworldliness even as her subject matter fixes on the anguish of the everyday.

SOAK’s debut rarely amplifies Monds-Watson’s sound beyond lugubrious seething, and even when it picks up the pace, as in “Garden,” the feeling throughout is sort of calmly unsettled — or, in the case of “Shuvels,” outright haunted. But don’t let Monds-Watson’s still, unassuming demeanor throw you off: These songs command attention by burrowing deep under the skin, where they can’t be dug out so easily.