When we heard Camille Delean’s single, Fault Line (Late June), we were stopped in our tracks. Recalling PJ Harvey’s work with John Parish, we just had to hear her new LP and find out what influenced the Montréal based songwriter.

Having supported the likes of Andy Shauf following her 2017 debut, Music on the Grey Mile, Delean released her new record, Cold House Burning, last week through the artist run label, E-Tron Records.

These are her Sound & Vision picks:

– Three favourite albums

MADONNA — RAY OF LIGHT

So many images and vague memories, I get chills. Afternoons under a table with headphones on… my childhood is contained in this music. So many hits, an underrated singer, so many great songs across many records, but this one is the most consistent. 90’s Madonna was my first hero: I was obsessed, I am still obsessed. Time travel for me with no end or beginning.

R.E.M. — MURMUR

I thought I knew what R.E.M. sounded like, and then I saw a video of a 1984 performance on the Old Grey Whistle Test that changed everything. I couldn’t figure out how to reconcile singing with texture and precision with a satisfying drum beat and electric guitar. Early R.E.M. is relentless rhythm and Michael Stipe growling into a microphone, it haunts every bone in your body, but also you can’t stop dancing. That is how you do it.

JONI MITCHELL — HEJIRA

I remember putting on the CD for the first time as a teenager and lying on the floor to listen, and by track two had to go turn it off. It scared the hell out of me, as if I had just seen a horror film. It’s what open space sounds like, where there is nothing to catch you if you fall. Which of course there isn’t, in life. What I am getting at is it makes me think of a lonely death, which is fine because it sounds amazing. It scares you and then tells you there is nothing to be scared about. It is the unknown captured in sound.

– One film that I love

THE SNOWMAN (RAYMOND BRIGGS)

It has a lot to do with the theme song, which is one of my favourite pieces of music ever, but not everything. It is cold and warm, light and dark, heartbreaking and so comforting. The book is great but the music takes it to another place. It’s not as ubiquitous over here as in the UK, but it should be. I like both the original intro and the David Bowie one.

– One book I love

DEREK JARMAN — MODERN NATURE

A journal, the daily life of somebody who is devoted to his work and to his garden, becomes sick, and follows as his days, work and garden continue and change and adapt with him until the end. It doesn’t pretend to have any answers, there are dead ends, it is not clean, it just takes in the days as they come. Lessons for everybody in there. Bonus is that his work is great.

– One song that’s important

MARY MARGARET O’HARA — YEAR IN SONG

More rock beat and vocal magic. Good for cars. Can’t think of another song that tells it like it is as plainly as this does, it is direct in the purest way. It encompasses everything. Just clear enough to latch on, but you are left to wonder what the hell is going on only to realise that in fact nobody knows, ever.

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