Kellie Marie

To listen and watch Kellie Marie perform is to experience something definitively new and refreshing on the contemporary Irish music scene. That may seem like a bold statement to utter in this day and age so why believe it? Well you can start from the fact that whilst being a singer/songwriter Kellie Marie can politely defy the genres restrictive typecasting. For despite being a gifted singer, musician and lyricist she achieves something altogether unique and special by mixing her theatrical background with an ever-eclectic range of musical influences and performance styles. Kellie’s world is a brilliantly bizarre musical crossroads where Janis Joplin, P.J. Harvey, blues and Gospel music can come together easily with the colour and humour of Alice in Wonderland and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For any serious artist, presentation is paramount and this ethos has lead Kellie into developing a variety of differen't stage personas which are invented or dropped like a whim. Sometimes her visual presence on stage can be that of a pared back struggling, gigging girl singing her heart out, other times she can look like a dark seductive vamp from a burlesque dream-world, dressed on stage in a black bowler hat, heavy make-up, and red high heels. Whether she is playing solo on guitar or with a backing band that has comprised in the past of Bongos, Keyboards, Saxophones or Cellos, her sound is always immediate, accessible, heart-felt, passionate, anthemic, comic, evocative, sensuous, bold, captivating, engaging and always, always entertaining. There are no limits to Kellie Marie’s vision or sound and everything is permitted so long as it adds to the pleasure of her creativity and of the audience’s experience of something new. (Andrew McEneff)