THE STORY
There are voices that soar, and voices that purr or growl. But very few singers are able to invite listeners into a world they never knew existed. Shelley Harland is endowed with a voice that shimmers behind an evanescent scrim, a voice that beckons you to explore a mystery.
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Listen to the a cappella verse of her song “More Than I Can Take,” featured in the TV Show Wentworth” and you’ll hear what icons like Elvis Costello noticed, when he reached out to Harland and invited her to join him on tour as an opening act.
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And she has a voice in another sense. She can write. And produce. She has ears with a vision. Her writing and production credits are diverse (in addition, to Elvis Costello, she’s worked with Velvet Underground founding member John Cale, Larry Klein, The Fray, Morgan Page, Ferry Corsten, and Guru from Gangstarr, as part of Jazzmatazz) but there are strong unifying aesthetics. She always evokes sonic realms that suggest something lurks in the shadows.
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Her gift for melody-writing is what keeps her collaborators coming back, time and time again. In a world where slick craftsmanship abounds, Harland writes honest, infectious melodies that bring listeners back to simple pleasures that made us fall in love with music in the first place. This authenticity is her calling card.
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Multi-valent, multi-talented, and driven by unerring taste and endless curiosity, Harland got her start by having an open ear: she began sampling sounds on the New York subway, and then returning to her tiny Brooklyn apartment, chopping them up into beats on an MPC 2000 sampler. Layering strings, piano and her voice, she discovered, by trial and error, a tapestry of sounds that was both widely appealing and entirely, authentically her own. She didn’t sound quite like anyone else, but she sounded like she inhabited a sonic world a lot of people wanted to move to. Soon she found herself managed by Nettwerk and signed to BMG in Los Angeles, Sony Music and Alberts Publishing (a century-old company whose roster includes AC/DC) in Australia.
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While her experiences and collaborations have been diverse, one unifying factor has always been her sense of wonder and musical wanderlust. This intriguing adventure has taken Harland from England to New York to Los Angeles to Australia and beyond.
In addition to writing music for film and TV, and collaborating with artists around the world, her solo album ‘Red Leaf’ (mixed by Chris Sheldon of Foo Fighters and Radiohead fame and mastered at the legendary Abbey Road Studios) was called “one to watch” by Rolling Stone magazine. The album also earned Harland an iTunes ‘single of the week’ with “In The Dark,” a song that was also featured in a worldwide commercial for Omega watches featuring Nicole Kidman.
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This led to more brands clamouring to license Harland’s richly evocative music, including Huawei and Sara Lee. TV shows including Love Island, The Voice, Poldark, Home & Away, Who Killed Sara and Paradise Hotel.
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Where Harland’s musical journey will take her next remains an open question. But you are invited to be part of it...
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