"She Stayed" by Reign the Girl Band

I got really rather excited over telling you about Reign the Girl Band's performance at Leamington Food & Drink Festival (their first appearance in the magazine): especially once Joe McAvoy-Boss had rescued their sound: such nuanced & subtle music was always going to need special curation in an outdoors location & once Joe had mounted his coup, that's what Lily and Sian (augmented on that occasion by Luke Weaver on cajon) received.

I was consequently extremely keen to tell you about some recorded music from them and thankfully only a fortnight has passed before the opportunity arose as their new single "She Stayed" came out this morning.

It's a sort of taster for their EP which should be a Christmas gift for us: I qualify the term as they describe today's release more as a demo while there is apparently a different version destined for the next release.

Initiated lyrically quite a few years ago by Sian, they've since worked it up together with Lily devising one of her characteristically gorgeous guitar parts to complement the similarly endowed vocals.

Artists these days seem much happier to put out what they call demos as official releases and often I am not sure why they tag what seem to me perfectly acceptable recordings in this way.

Certainly it's a really haunting take with the minimum of parts: but is that a problem when the parts are so potent and play to the strengths of the group in question? Perhaps the later version will have more parts dubbed on & maybe those might bring out other aspects of "She Stayed" but I'm willing to bet that it will complement and not supersede nor diminish this one.

The one element you can't miss besides these is the noticeable sound of fingers moving on strings: conceivably this contributes to the "demo" designation but to me it adds an interesting percussive part & I've certainly argued in the past that this facet of recordings isn't necessarily one to edit out: it does make songs that little more accessible to the listener in circumstances such as this one.

Reign The Girl Band cite "..a few different foundations: joy, space for experimentation, respect, friendship, chocolate, and cooking dinner for each other. Oh, and what we hope is some pretty great music". The phenomenon just discussed certainly supplies a possible example of experimentation and I can attest the joy & great music. The others lie outside my remit & perception.

The sound if anything brought to mind faint echoes of the early solo career of Tracey Thorn as her time with the Marine Girls came to an end & she brought out ‘A Distant Shore': the parallels extend to the littoral references in "She Stayed".

At the risk of too much pretension, I'd make a point following on from this about the Siren effect which "She Stayed" evinces: with a song this seductive, no wonder "she" stayed.

You can see a performance of the song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtgwpYLDfwc

and you can catch Reign the Girl Band live tomorrow at Soul Coventry at Coventry University

 Bring on the EP!