Her first ever song was written for a cancer charity while she was doing her GCSEs, and six years later she’s soundtracking a murder. Laura Doggett’s music doesn’t shy away from the dark side – her low, powerful voice suits the shadows.
This week’s return of ITV’s hit murder mystery series, Broadchurch, has been using the Bath singer’s new single Old Faces on its trailer. “How does it feel when someone’s stripped you bare?” she sings over sparse piano chords while David Tennant and Olivia Colman look tense by the seaside. With an emotional chorus crashing in halfway, it sounds like she’s gunning for Adele’s audience already.
It’s been a rapid trajectory from edgier beginnings last summer, via an appearance as an unknown on Jools Holland and a tour supporting chart-topping soul man John Newman. Her introductory single, Phoenix, was produced by hip Vienna-based Londoner SOHN, who underpinned her smooth tones with skittering, restless electronics and created something extraordinary. Since then she’s been making songs that are slightly less strange, but still have that disorientating, middle of the night feel, with Jamiroquai’s keyboard player Matt Johnson. Check their woozy single from last September, Moonshine.
She understands her power: “The first time I made someone cry with my music, it sounds a bit morbid but that just made me really realise that people wanted to listen to my voice,” she has said. Now it’s prominently positioned on a morbid crime drama, and can soon be heard first hand in an ideal space: the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, a candlelit Jacobean theatre next door to Shakespeare’s Globe. The stage is set for a big year ahead.
Jan 19, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, SE1 (020 20 7401 9919, shakespearesglobe.com)
