One of the many highlights of the Standard Theatre Awards was the performance of Ava Joe, a rising singer-songwriter who held a daunting crowd of stage superstar spellbound with her soaring heartache tunes. “Cate Blanchett came up to me afterwards and thanked me for the songs,” recalls a still dazzled Ava, “It was an honour to sing to so many amazing people and to hear them talk about the emotional connection in theatre really resonated with me.”
The 24 year old is sure to be picking up plenty of awards herself in the coming years with music that connects straight to your nervous system. A raw, jazz-influenced talent in the Amy Winehouse vein, and alumni of the Brit School like Raye, she remains a unique proposition influenced by Nirvana and Radiohead as much as Billie Holiday: “I just love that they turn their pain into art. I'm really drawn to darkness in music and building a world.”
New EP Big Beautiful Mess is a dreamy world to enter, but founded on harsh realities. The songs are truly psychedelic in that sense, and the Sixties were an important inspiration.
“Freedom is the key theme,” she says of the record, “We recorded the title track while watching a film of people dancing at Woodstock. We wanted to get that feeling of freedom across, being wild and young. And finding beauty in things that aren’t beautiful. The beauty in the sadness, finding beauty in pain, finding beauty in the mess.”
Born in Devon, she lived in Ireland and Surrey before settling in London. She’s the eldest of 10 children from a blended family and started writing songs amidst her parents’ divorce when she was in her early teens. She always sang, but songwriting became an outlet.
“I think that period caused me a lot of problems. It caused me to sort of seek love in the wrong places. But through it all I knew that this was going to be my story, this is what I'm going to write about and I wouldn't change it.”
The Brit School, with its diverse mix of people from different background, helped bring jazz, funk and soul into her style. Still, after a bad relationship in her late teens, she found she couldn't sing: “I lost everything, my people, my voice, myself... I had to build it all back again.” That voice now is a powerful yet vulnerable instrument wired directly to her heartstrings; Sunkissed on the EP, about the fleeting joy of first love, sees it rise on emotion till it breaks.
“It’s always been about turning a bad situation, a heaviness or a sadness, and channeling it into something beautiful that can then uplift you, and others too. It's a universal language beyond words, it's a magical thing.”
With the likes of Sienna Spiro also doing distinctive things while retaining control of their direction, Ava is part of an exciting new wave of female singer-songwriters. And while she acknowledges the risks of delving into the darkness for material, she also possesses a steely confidence that could take her stadium-sized.
“I supported Jalen Ngonda on his UK tour and played at Hammersmith Apollo and it made me realise I'm meant for bigger stages. I've always wanted to be a singer for really big audiences. I want my music to be reached by as many people as possible.”
Big Beautiful Mess EP by Ava Joe is out on 9 April.
