Singer-songwriter Olive Jones has a unique way of making us feel heard through her music. With her gorgeous soul and blues-influenced sound, not to mention her stunning voice, this future star draws you into her world, as though she’s singing for you and you alone. Her debut album, “For Mary”, encapsulates these talents into one cohesive work, placing her at the forefront of a British soul renaissance. 

“Your first album is like a tapestry of yourself,” Jones suggests. “I’ve been writing songs for so long, and each of these tracks has its own story and a moment in my life – so the record is a quilt made from all those patches.”

We open with “Mary”, inspired by her longing to protect a loved one from their struggles with poor mental health. The title character is fictional, inspired by a number of people in Jones’s life who have been impacted, in myriad ways, by mental health issues. “A lot of people close to me were affected, and I also grew up in an era where it wasn’t really spoken about,” she says. “I think it’s changed a lot since, but the song felt to me like an opportunity to explore that feeling of wanting to be there for someone, and the helplessness of perhaps realising that you can’t.”

Jones skilfully turns her pen to such complex subjects with poetic flair, weaving in wonderful turns of phrase that she sings in a sweet, honeyed lilt: “Let me in under the clouds that roam above you/ Maybe I could blow them away.” The instrumentation blows through like an autumn wind; strings sigh gracefully; percussion shivers like rain bouncing off the pavement. 

This remarkable musicality harks back to Jones’s childhood by the coast in Dorset. “It was idyllic but there was no music scene,” she recalls with a laugh. Fortunately, her parents had “really good taste” in music, and she was fed a steady diet of jazz and soul from a young age. “There was a lot of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Miles Davis…” she says. “I remember being really moved by Davies’s work “Blue in Green” from his iconic album “Kind of Blue”, listening to the harmonies and the expressive nature of it.” 

She picked up the saxophone when she was seven years old and joined a local weekend arts club. Then, aged 12, her father bought her a guitar; two years later she was writing her first original songs. “Coming from rural England, there’s no clear path into a music career,” she points out. “But I was so drawn to music, I felt strongly this was what I wanted to do with my life.” Olive moved to Leeds and fell in with a quartet who created what she describes as “electronic soul”. They did well, even signing a record deal and getting themselves a live agent. But Olive couldn’t escape the feeling that she was pushing something important to one side. 

It perhaps didn’t help that, once she went solo, Olive was pulled out of the studio and on tour with Bombay Bicycle Club, touring major venues around the UK, Europe and North America for a year. Yet this was an opportunity to work on her own live performances, hone her craft and allow those songs inside her to percolate; to find their shape. “The boys were so supportive of the fact I was working on music at the same time, and I learned a lot about touring at that kind of level after coming from the grassroots scene,” she says. “There were so many special moments, and we’ve stayed friends – I’m so grateful for that opportunity.”

As a result of this drawn-out creative process, some of the songs on For Mary were written “a long time ago”, she reflects. But it doesn’t matter: “If you can write something that feels timeless and that people can relate to… it lasts forever.”

She was assisted on “For Mary” by emerging producer and songwriter James Wyatt (George Ezra, Ellie Goulding, Lianne La Havas). The first song they created together, “All in My Head”, about the end of a relationship and the mourning of what could have been: the future you once dreamt of together. Olive’s voice is achingly vulnerable as she sings the refrain, like whispers of smoke curling above the burning embers and flickering flames of instrumentation: “Thought I gave it all/ Knew the score/ What’s it for/ When love can be so cruel?” 

“I’ve always been drawn to artists who have that rawness to them, a kind of expression that’s not overly polished,” she says. “I’m glad I came up the way I did through the grassroots scene and not from having a viral TikTok moment or anything like that – I feel incredibly lucky to have been surrounded by the incredible musicians in my community, part of a scene where everyone wants to support each other.”

Olive’s own natural empathy lends itself to the single “Kingdom”, sadly as pertinent as it was when she wrote it in the wake of the EU Referendum. “The lyrics just came out of me – I think I was trying to capture the frustration of it all, our arrogance, how Brexit felt like shooting ourselves in the foot,” she says. There’s also a sadness, beneath that propulsive guitar riff, at the tarnished nature of British patriotism. 

The dramatic “Talk About Love”, meanwhile, pulls us into the tumultuous phase of a relationship in which boundaries are being tested and communication breakdowns need to be confronted. Enveloped by the glide of violins and climactic percussion, Olive’s narrator yearns for the simpler kind of love, while also acknowledging that successful relationships require work. “I think contemporary dating culture has resulted in something of a throwaway attitude towards relationships,” she suggests. “People are less willing to work through very normal challenges, and ‘Talk About Love’ explores that idea of personal growth and the fundamental need for communication.”

Olive views her songwriting as having two sides: “Either I’m trying to process something that’s happening to me, or empathise with someone else and work out why they might behave in certain ways,” she says. On “A Woman’s Heart”, it’s arguably both, as she reflects on past conversations about the universal struggles of women with those close to her. “It’s also an acknowledgement of the freedoms I have today, thanks to all the women who have been before me,” she says. “Summer Rain” is a blissful, almost psychedelic musing on the nature of love; “Blossom Tides” is a heart-rending lament written for Olive’s late uncle while she sat beneath the falling blossoms of a cherry tree.

“Planes”, too, comes from a personal moment of introspection while still managing to be universally relatable. It was written while Olive was living in Leeds, under a flight path. Come the 2020 lockdown, suddenly the incessant roar of turbines had disappeared, leaving the birdsong to rise to an almost-deafening chorus of its own. Perhaps unconsciously referencing soul singer Ann Peebles’ 1973 classic “I Can’t Stand the Rain”, Olive opens with a keening call: “I can’t stand the planes flying overhead…” There’s an irresistible groove to the guitar hook, emulating the cyclical nature of the one-day-at-a-time life Olive finds herself in. “Colour on the Wall” expands this to ponder how we pin our hopes on the next generation to do better than we have. 

For Mary is a remarkable debut, testament to Olive’s maturity and confidence as an artist. By incorporating such classic influences with timeless or otherwise timely themes, she has created a record that will resonate with listeners for years to come.

Recommended For Fans Of:

Olivia Dean, Lianne La Havas, Alice Phoebe Lou, Hajaj, Cleo Sol