Kyla La Grange launched her career by singing anonymously during open-mike evenings in shadowy pubs while completing a philosophy degree at Cambridge University. The Watford native quickly assembled a circle of sympathetic players, formed a backing group, and began crafting material that aimed higher than the modest student rooms where she had previously performed.
Once her studies ended and she settled in London, the music took on a denser, more ominous character. Indie imprint Chess Club signed her, issuing the first single “Been Better” in 2011. She then appeared regularly at the Communion showcases in Notting Hill, the same series that had already introduced Ben Howard, Treetop Flyers, and Marcus Foster, displaying both her incisive songwriting and emotionally direct lyrics.
Although traces of Cat Power and Joni Mitchell surface in her work, the songs inhabit a distinctly gothic, pastoral folk landscape. Live presentations routinely incorporated foliage, glitter, and tiaras fashioned from pigeon bones, supplying the theatrical scale associated with Florence Welch and the otherworldly aura linked to Bat for Lashes and thereby framing her stark folk-pop accounts of heartbreak and grief.
La Grange’s forceful, emotionally raw delivery propelled the expansive choruses of “Heavy Stone” and “Vampire Soul” to wide critical notice, alerting major labels to her unfiltered talent. Her debut album, Ashes, arrived in 2012 under the supervision of producer Brett Shaw, whose prior credits include Eliza Doolittle, Ed Sheeran, and the Twang. After the release she played several summer festivals and then toured Europe as a headline act through the close of the year.
Touring completed, she took a pause in early 2013 and began writing songs for a second album that deliberately departed from the folk textures of her first. Producer and DJ James Jacob, known as Jakwob, was brought in to steer the project toward electronic textures and bright, hook-driven arrangements. The resulting record, Cut Your Teeth, appeared in 2014.
