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Denai Moore has apparently been making music since she was seven-years-old, which is unfortunately almost impossible to verify. So here are some things we definitely know to be true – Moore is 19-years-old and was born in Jamaica. When she was 10 she and her family moved to Stratford and she spent a lot of her youth obsessing over Lauryn Hill ("because of her honesty"), before moving on to folkier things such as Bon Iver and Feist after getting her first guitar. Apparently she'd barely performed live until last year, but has since supported Graham Coxon.
At some point she was brought to the attention of Plan B, aka Ben Drew, who liked her so much he's co-produced much of her debut EP, including the delicate title track, premiered here. Built around a skeletal backing of piano, barely-scraped acoustic guitar and distant strings, the real star is Moore, whose restrained vocal performance allows the song's undulating melodies to worm their way to the surface. There's a beautiful bit around the 2:50 mark where the song lifts slightly, Moore singing "you're sinking down like a pebble in the lake, like the ghosts of my past, that's fading away" as if she's about to burst into tears.
The Lake EP is released on 4 November via Because Music.
