Olivia Broadfield BIO:

Vagrant Records proudly announces the addition of UK artist Olivia Broadfield to the roster. Vagrant will release Broadfield’s debut, Eyes Wide Open, this summer through a partnership with the artist’s own label Cherry Bang. 

"I have been blown away by how well things have been going for me over the past year and signing with Vagrant is quite simply the cherry on top,” said Broadfield. “I am so excited to be working with Vagrant, they have shown such faith and belief in me as an artist and I know that my album will be in good hands. It's taken a lot of hard work to get this far and I can't wait to take things to the next level with Vagrant by my side."

While still unsigned, Broadfield’s electro-indie-pop songs made their way on to American airwaves through the top-rated MTV shows The Hills and The Real World, major motion picture The Eye, and most recently the video for her song “Indescribable” aired during the GRAMMY Awards.  

“Indescribable” was one of ten songs chosen out of 300 entries by producer and music supervisor Gary Calamar for “Project Rising Stars: The Lincoln Video Music Challenge,” a music video-based competition.  Directed by Kurt Nishimura, the video for “Indescribable” can be seen in its entirety at www.cbs.com/lincoln or www.filmaka.com/lincoln. 

Nishimura also directed the video for “Silence” (which debuted and charted on VH1 and is now on Olivia’s MySpace page) and recently completed the video for the first US single, “Don’t Cry.” Stay tuned for details of the exclusive premiere. 

The multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter wrote, recorded, and produced Eyes Wide Open in her “rock ‘n’ roll bungalow” home studio based in a small village in the middle of England.

That notion of an epic quest rings apparent from the first notes of Red Of Tooth And Claw. Equally indebted to Eric Burdon and Johnny Cash (Turla’s vocals have never sounded so ominously haunted and low), “I’m Comin’ Home” sets the album’s tone with a shuffle and a snarl. Bassist Matt Armstrong and new drummer Dagan Thogerson drive the songs with equal parts understatement and brute force, and cellist Sarah Balliet, whose vocabulary spans from Kentucky bluegrass to Western classical, guides and slashes through the songs with colors both in and outside the lines of traditional Americana.

The pace may change—see the Ennio Morricone-inspired instrumental “Theme” or the huge, swinging confrontational lament “Black Spot”—but there’s a sense of forward momentum throughout Red Of Tooth And Claw that drives home the idea of moving inevitably closer to… something. “With In Bocca Al Lupo, we were getting inspiration from a basic idea—sin, in the Dante/Divine Comedy sense—and doing 12 songs that were very unique and about different people. But as a whole, it’s just an anthology of songs,” says Turla. “With this one, we got the story developed and realized that we wanted to stay moving in that direction throughout the record. The album is kind of frantic at times, and intentionally so: If it’s an album about travel, let’s actually make it sound like travel.”

Murder By Death’s own travels—the band have shared stages with artists as musically and geographically far-flung as Against Me!, Rev. Horton Heat, the Pogues, Clutch and Flogging Molly—have seasoned the band as performers, but the m.o. for their music has existed since day one. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who’s pored over MBD’s lyrics that between them, Turla and cellist Sarah Balliet have degrees in religious studies and anthropology; however, beyond the band members’ book-smarts lies a shared love not only of American roots music, but of the gut-level emotion at that music’s core. It’s one thing to be a rock band that writes concept albums, but MBD is not drawn to the sort of clinical, pretentious trappings usually associated with that idea. As Turla explains, “The real energy in our songs comes from stuff like the sexual tension, the murder, the drinking and basically any other dirt you find between the lines.”