A Review of North East’s Own: before close – 'roisin'
A demo found its way to George Ezra. He loved what he heard, reached out, and invited north east duo before close and fellow Teesside artist Amelia Coburn to Hotel Quebec Studios to record with producer Liam Thorne, whose credits include Billie Marten, Jack Savoretti and Ezra himself. Within days, as Joe Ramsey describes it, the three of them felt like best friends. The laughter and joy in the studio fed directly into the music. 'Roisin', released August 28th, sounds exactly like that: warm, unhurried, built on human connection rather than production calculation.
The track is the collaborative project of UK songwriters Jodie Nicholson and Joe Ramsey, who make music that Clash Magazine has described as sparse and careful, packed with close harmonies, reflecting north east England's light and geography. DIY Magazine found in their earlier work wall-to-wall cosiness, intimate, homemade, raw and deeply human. BBC Introducing's Shakk called it fragile but powerful. 'Roisin' earns all of those descriptions and then some: the addition of Amelia Coburn's voice completing a three-part harmony arrangement that brings to mind The Staves, First Aid Kit, Laura Marling and the effortless blend of Crosby, Stills and Nash.
The song was written around a fictional couple, seasonal references tracking how relationships shift across time. Jodie pictures a man sitting under an autumn tree, reflecting, longing for one more conversation with someone named Roisin. Warm, nostalgic, longing and hopeful: those four qualities move through the song in sequence rather than simultaneously, the emotional temperature shifting across the track's runtime in a way that gives it genuine arc.
Joe describes the finished song as feeling like something from the sixties, focused entirely on vocals and harmonies in a dreamlike atmosphere. That quality, the sense of music made without unnecessary embellishment, without anything between the performance and the listener, is the rarest and the most difficult to achieve. Before close have achieved it, in George Ezra's studio, in a week that felt like something more.
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