Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
This House, not one that is in the ownership of the artist, but one that perhaps is more comfortable to be within, to reside with the words and lyrical abandon, the soft soulful tearing apart of everything you know and all that could have been. In This House all is possible because it is a place where there are secrets to be spilled, images to wrestle with and the sweet song of beauty to impart. It is not any old house, it is Fabia’s house and it is one that she makes all welcome to visit.
Fabia’s debut E.P. is one of superb spirit, melancholic magnificence that floats and dominates the proceedings, it is the spirit that is felt from the smallest most humble abode to the stately of palaces, if there is no song, if there is no chant of humanity at its most sincere then what use is bricks and mortar in such a fashion, without music the home is a prison, not a house.
With Rachel Shakespeare, Rhiannon James, Max Luther, David Hamblett and Andy Ross all adding knowledge, musical furniture in a classical style and the creature comforts of adorning spiritual artwork to Fabia’s four walls, her four incredibly haunting songs, are to be seen as Masters in their own right.
The four tracks, Bridge You Burned, Fell Awake, This House and The Jewel are attractive, they pull the listener in far beyond the welcome mat and the drawing room of inspiration, they are ones that take the musician’s voice deep into the cellar and up to the loft. This is where the ideas come from, from everywhere, not just a single solitary tired room but from the overflow of human existence that is exotic and powerful throughout the E.P.
A dynamic, sensuous affair, This House is one that is not owned, horded away behind corrugated sheets of metal and hidden from view, obscured by music that is undemanding or unlikeable; this is a set of songs that are open to the light, released from burden and ones that grow with feminine might on each listen. A tremendous and worth debut by a woman with a heartbreakingly beautiful voice.
Ian D. Hall