Hudson Taylor

Irish siblings Alfie and Harry Hudson-Taylor, raised by a father who played music and a mother who danced, first took to busking in Dublin as teenagers, mixing Beatles and Beach Boys covers with original songs under the moniker Harry & Alfie. Positive reactions to the clips they uploaded prompted a self-released Battles EP in 2012 that reached the top of the Irish iTunes chart and landed at number 14 in Britain. Buoyed by those results, the pair relocated to London to treat music as a profession, securing a Polydor contract just over a year later when they were 18 and 20.

Their intimate vocal blends, acoustic folk textures, and pronounced 1960s leanings evoked Simon & Garfunkel or Bob Dylan on certain tracks, while an equal appetite for current pop gave others a fresher edge; sharp, adult, occasionally somber lyrics further distinguished the material. Once settled in the capital they shared a house temporarily with the still-unreleased English folk-pop singer Gabrielle Aplin, writing several songs together before she and Alfie started a relationship. Subsequent EPs—Cinematic Lifestyle, Osea, and Weapons—raised Hudson Taylor’s profile. With Polydor now behind them and Battles reissued, the brothers opened for Kodaline and Jake Bugg, appeared at Glastonbury, and achieved a career highlight supporting the Rolling Stones before 50,000 spectators in Hyde Park. Their first major single, the insistent “Chasing Rubies,” arrived in October 2014 and registered modest U.K. chart entries, while their debut album, then slated as Singing for Strangers, was slated for March 2015.