Liela Moss - My Name Is Safe In Your Mouth (2018)

"The act of making this record has felt truly exotic for me by way of its minimalism," says Liela Moss of her debut solo album. Released via Bella Union in November, My Name Is Safe in Your Mouth more than lives up to Moss's promise of fresh, bold adventure. Sonically spare yet sumptuous in its emotions, elemental power and expansive melodies, the record is a richly felt, vividly-realised trip into the interior from the Duke Spirit singer. A serene-to-stormy series of deep dream-pop meditations on devotion and selfhood, creativity and parenthood, it treats unknown territory not as something to fear but as a seed-bed of possibility. As Liela puts it, "I was in my own modest studio, surrounded by deep rural Somerset, and building the album bit by bit over a year with just my producer and partner Toby Butler - with whom I co-wrote all the music. We worked to our own schedule and across all seasons. Staring out of the window singing, I would watch the changing natural phenomena around me and sing to the forms outside. My window-view outside was like an umbilical cord; I was receiving little messages from the nature beyond and the songs were growing inside the studio, transmitting back."