Tom McRae

It's rare that a debut album from a young songwriter attacks you with such passion and bitter experience as you'll find on the opening gambit from London resident Tom McRae. With a clutch of finely crafted tunes and a potent, impassioned voice, McRae is an artist of obvious awesome potential.

A lot of my music tends to be about cheating your destiny and changing what you are supposed to be. I think 90% of people have a path dictated to them by history and that was something I was determined wouldn't happen to me.

McRae was brought up in a tiny village in Suffolk with a population of 250. There weren't any pubs, but there were two churches, which gives you an idea of what people's priorities were. His parent's split when he was eight and he went to live with his mother, who, like her ex-husband was also a vicar.

I thought for a long time that the way I wanted to live my life was totally removed from my parents, but I've kind of discovered that I've probably got more in common with them than I thought. I think I share with my father the same desire to stand up on some sort of stage and preach to people. But whereas he wears a black dress and sing hymns, I use a guitar and my own music. I think we also share a feeling of dissatisfaction with the surface level that the world seems to run on. We're trying to find a sort of transcendence, to access those other levels. That's what I use my music for.

Living where he did was a particular frustration for McRae, and getting to London (to many people London is England, it's where everything happens), became a definite aim.

I hated the countryside. There was a particular feeling of isolation, that nothing was going on, you can waste away there. I looked for any opportunity to get to London and took it.

McRae played his home demos to producer Roger Bechirian who was blown away and offered to manage him. A deal with db Records soon followed.

It's about the things that obsess me. Death, Life, the fact that you have such a short time to actually achieve anything and that you've got this moment, now, to be who you're going to be. Everything right now is about comfort and distraction rather than actually having to think. Although I'd hope to entertain on some level, I'd rather people felt uncomfortable than simply entertained.

It's a remarkable debut. Lyrically vivid and musically touching, there's themes of revenge and overtones of bitterness throughout, but it's the real intent that's most striking;

You can make music without a reason, but it's just noise. But if you're trying to find out who you are it's easier to find out what you're against than what you're for. A lot of the songs are about that. You do have some power, choices that you can make and whilst I'm not expecting to change people, you can tap into something that's already there and move people in the same way I'm trying to move myself.

McRae talks about those moments of clarity in life that are fleeting and difficult to put into words and the aim is to try and access those emotions and feelings through the music. He's poured himself into this, you should take a closer look.

Singer/songwriter Tom McRae credits his upbringing for leading him to a career in music. While growing up in Chelmsford, his parents were vicars in the Church of England and McRae sang in the choir. His mother played guitar and, as a teen, he'd borrow it. When his sisters were listening to Kate Bush and U2, McRae followed and began buying records. He also started to become serious about music. At age 18, he went off to Guild Hall University to study music politics, soon forming bands and writing songs. A chance meeting with sound engineer Roger Bechirian (Elvis Costello, Squeeze, Carlene Carter) led him to a working relationship. He and Bechirian shaped McRae's soft-spoken sound, which later yanked him a deal with Mercury's db Records. Tom McRae's confessional self-titled debut appeared in fall 2001 and earned him comparisons to Nick Drake and Bob Dylan. Critics raved and McRae also a gained Mercury Music Prize nomination the same year. In 2003 Just Like Blood hit shelves and the next year McRae moved to California, where he recorded his third full-length, All Maps Welcome, an album that was released in 2005. Two years later King of Cards, recorded in England, came out. ~ MacKenzie Wilson, All Music Guide