‘Demons May Come Crawling…’ - YVA
Always pay attention to the artist who takes you to a place with their music, and then seeks to take you further. After wowing us with her ‘Hype Machine’ EP, YVA returns with her latest collection of songs, ‘Delusions of Grandeur’. Join us on this journey of emotional discovery and growth, and explore the EP as we ask YVA about its long germination and what it took to get here.
YVA is the artistic name taken by vocalist and producer Amy Holford. Based in the north of England, YVA is a permanent fixture of Nitin Sawhney’s live band, featuring on his forthcoming album ‘Identity’ and will perform parts of the record at a highly anticipated Royal Albert Hall concert in October.
Back in 2021, we wrote about YVA’s previous EP, ‘Hype Machine’ – five tracks that explore the effect social media and a society of high expectations has on the human psyche. It was an EP that had a profound impact on Moths and Giraffes and remains a listening staple. More recently, we wrote about YVA’s work with Newcastle upon Tyne jazz ensemble Slowlight Quartet. In February, YVA and the band recorded an album in front of a live audience, with excerpts performed in a set at the Newcastle Jazz Festival in August.
Where ‘Hype Machine’ was more about how the world outside affects the one inside, YVA’s latest EP ‘Delusions of Grandeur’ focuses on how the inside is already impacted by its own struggle, and the healing that time affords.
‘Close the curtain, I can’t think in the light, demons may come crawling, but I can’t seem to cry.’
‘I Have Seen’ marked the first release of solo music from YVA in over two years back in July, and what a grand return. From the first few notes, you know this is a different musical expedition from ‘Hype Machine’, into a landscape more natural, but not without the distant ringing of that work in the rear-view mirror.
‘Bound in chains, I can’t get out of bed, and it’s too late now and I can’t fail again.’
This track is augmented by The 1975 touring keyboardist and guitarist Jamie Squire. As on her previous EP, these songs are produced by YVA and Jonathan Hibbert, with ‘I Have Seen’ also featuring additional production from Khushi. Written when Amy Holford was a teenager, this song is fully realised almost fifteen years later.
‘I have wasted all my youth, I have squeezed too much from this old fruit.’
‘I Have Seen’ paces itself, YVA taking another step into the despair of Hype Machine’s final track, ‘Missing Me’ with each successive verse and chorus. Not only is this writer gifted with articulating the paralysing grip anxiety and depression has on a person, her voice is unmatched in its ability to make you understand its tremendous damning power.
Originally completed before the birth of her daughter, YVA chose to revisit her vocal recordings on this EP, paying extra close attention to their detail and delivery to get them just right. It’s safe to say this final adjustment has paid off. With a last additional harmony, YVA’s lead vocal splits off in the mix, exiting stage left.
“Doubt waits at the door, I crave, I want more, ‘cos I love taking score, nothing’s enough for a bruise that’s always sore.”
A track Amy Holford has little memory of writing in the throes of lockdown, ‘Do Not Descend’ is the newest composition on this EP, and a clear choice as a single. Lyrically, YVA is at her most uplifting, convincing herself that to give in to her own doubts might be the easiest option, but also the least viable. The production is more traditional from YVA and Hibbert, with Martyn Kaine returning behind the drum kit on this EP as he was for ‘Hype Machine’. It’s in this song where his contribution is felt the most, providing that essential rhythmic lift for this track’s choruses.
YVA’s voice is soaring, built not on a single strong lead vocal, but on a small army of them, reinforcing the chorus lyric, ‘Do Not Descend, do not depend, you don’t have to break before you bend, if you need to learn how to grow up, in the end.’ In the second chorus, a backing vocal can be heard as a voice of doubt in the back of her mind, echoing the words ‘break’ and ‘bend’. ‘Do Not Descend’ serves not only as a reminder for herself, but as a warning to others, ‘Don’t wait for life, if you give it an inch you’ll go for miles.’
‘Roads ahead, and roads behind us, I don’t see how they’re the same.’
The final piece on ‘Delusions of Grandeur’ is a musing on bravery and what could’ve been. Khushi returns as co-writer and co-producer for ‘Grandeur’, helping to shape an orchestral arrangement out of software and sheer imagination.
The music crafted for ‘Grandeur’ is a living, breathing organism, inhaling and exhaling beneath YVA’s lyric. More than the rest of the EP, the words penned by Holford convey imagery as well as emotion, ‘I’m looking through trees like a barcode on a wrapper,’ or the second verse, ‘I was sitting inside a dance hall, in a pose that wouldn’t let me breathe.’ The chorus is the great ‘what if’ in this story, asking if she had done things differently, ‘Would I love you better?’ Leaving this piece unresolved, the score rumbles in tune with the pain in YVA’s vocal. To your left, an obscured voice sings the final words of the EP - ‘In the end, I am young and I am lost.’
‘Delusions of Grandeur’ is a statement from an artist who knows her own mind, a symbol of great emotional toil and depth. YVA cracks open her doubts in a long thread from the last vestiges of adolescence to pre-motherhood, finding that the burden of mental health isn’t an easy journey to navigate. But there is hope, direction, and a greater sense of self-awareness, as heard in ‘Do Not Descend’. Seeing the thematic continuation between ‘Hype Machine’ and ‘Delusions of Grandeur’, what might happen in the next chapter of the YVA story?
Continue reading for our Q&A with YVA. We ask about the roots of ‘I Have Seen’, motherhood, preparing to play the Royal Albert Hall and the EP’s artworks by Jessica Lee. All this and more below!
1. Your new EP 'Delusions of Grandeur' picks up where Hype Machine's 'Missing Me' left off. Was it the response to the song from fans that fuelled this direction, or was this more of a natural progression of your writing?
A bit of both. Missing Me resonates a lot with people and I understood that part of it had to do with the song being stripped back and letting my vocal take the focus, but also because it was penned in a single moment and was a raw thing in itself. I was sitting on I Have Seen and Grandeur for at least a couple of years and knew they were going to be on an EP together. Do Not Descend rounded it all out. Whereas HYPE MACHINE was me exploring sounds and textures, Delusions of Grandeur represents more of me at my core, really. It was kind of serendipitous that I had these songs ready and Missing Me had been received so well.
2. 'I Have Seen' just gets me to my core. What kind of place were you in to pen something with such emotional power?
I wrote it when I was 17, I think. In its first essence, anyway. It was the first song I really wrote that I cared about enough that I carried it all the way through my twenties and nobody heard it. I think it’s because I was so young, but it acknowledged the darker aspects of myself that I’ve struggled with over the years. I could really only answer this question retrospectively, because I didn’t understand a lot about myself then, and all I felt was that there was this shadow and it was about hiding it away, or hiding from it, not looking at it head on like I do now.
3. This song was fifteen years in the making. What's the story of this unusually long germination? Does the finished version resemble its original form at all?
As those years have gone by, I’ve resolved a lot of stuff, and that’s when I started adapting and changing it to give it more of a resolution. Working with Khushi meant I could focus more on my melody and lyrics, and we went back and forth with versions before we landed on its final form. The end chorus with the arpeggiated harp was a big moment, it allowed me to really let go and give the track a huge crescendo and release that it never had before just strumming it on my guitar.
4. As with the 'Hype Machine' EP, the artwork you have for this collection of songs is fantastic, tell me more about the artworks and their origins.
Jessica Lee delivered some more beautiful artworks just based off of a colour palette I gave her (the gloaming, a great word and time of day) and a felt response to the music. They’re so abstract and I love seeing in a physical format someone’s reaction to the music, what they feel. A lot of Jessica’s other work is very textured and instinctive too, she sent me a gorgeous tapestry when I had my daughter that is now on the studio wall that I will cherish forever. I love that I Have Seen looks like a heart in shadow, but from all of that sprouts colour and life, despite the darkness. Do Not Descend is a shot of hope, and the EP artwork covers both aspects of my self, of this EP, and the duality I feel constantly. It’s like a veil showing both worlds. I’m a gemini, by the way…
5. 'Do Not Descend' speaks of self-doubt but also progress, do you still have doubts within your creative career?
Absolutely. I think the main contention for me at the moment is how much energy I’m willing to give it, but that’s more to do with being a mother than anything! I’m not as passionate as I was. I’ve known that for a long time and I’m fairly certain it’s just a defence mechanism after all the anxiety I’ve built up over my years in this industry, but also because I just don’t have time to be passionate, you know? The real light at the end of the tunnel for me though is that I have no idea where it’s going. I’m not tethered to any real idea of success because that ship sailed when I was 27. I’m open and welcome to see where I get to, on the work that I am able to do, and that’s all I can do.
6. When did 'Delusions of Grandeur' emerge as the EP title? Was it when the closing track was written?
Grandeur was a poem first before it was a song. The process of producing it meant I lost a verse that I was very much defiant on keeping, and now I can’t even remember how it went. It was a good decision. I’ll have the first demo with Khushi somewhere. But I knew this EP was going to exist for a long time and I knew it was going to be centred around Grandeur. Grandeur was the track that harnessed all the loneliness, lack of connection, sadness and regret I’d felt in my life, and I am most proud of it, of all my songs. It is very much me. When Khushi was playing these chords, I just started singing the words I had in a note on my phone, and then he just left me in his shed to wail into the microphone, and it all just bled out. And I had an immense feeling that I’d written something pivotal, even if it was just for me. The first moment in my career that I’d created something that made sense to me artistically, and a lot of the production decisions I’ve made since then have followed on from that.
7. I've seen you write about struggling to find space for your artistry with the reality of motherhood. Do you have any advice for other creative parents?
Don’t beat yourself up. I mean, Christ, you have enough on your plate just doing all you need to do to raise a child well, with patience and empathy, and hold the constant responsibility of trying to raise them right. The guilt is so real. It’s the one thing I know I have in common with other parents, in that you just feel guilty all the bloody time; guilty you’re not giving them enough, guilty you’re giving them too much, guilty when you work, guilty that you don’t so they can give them more, guilty when you take time for yourself even for five minutes, guilty for turning your back, for doing chores. It’s relentless. Around all that you’re trying to be creative, but you’re just burnt out most days, so how then hell can you? Some people find release in their art but for me, I’ve just been too tapped out to bother. And that’s fine. Time will emerge slowly as she gets older, as it has done to make this album. My one bit of advice to my friends having babies now is to dance with every moment, stay fluid. Not one moment is the same, and that goes for creativity too. You might not do much for a couple of years, but you can make up for it. And the bonus is that you were present and in love with your kid. You were there.
8. Of course we recently wrote about your work with Slowlight Quartet, how was the set received at Newcastle Jazz Festival?
It was so great! The room was absolutely boiling but packed out, and it was my first proper gig with Juno there so I was kind of mothering as I was on stage which might have stressed me out before, but the lads make me so relaxed, that I just had fun with it. I definitely don’t feel nerves like I did before. I’m too busy being nervous that she is going to have a melt-down, eat a chip off the floor or fall down some stairs. There’s no space to be nervous about music!
9. You'll be playing the Royal Albert Hall with Nitin Sawhney in October. How do you mentally prepare to play a legendary venue like that?
At the moment the only way I can prepare is when I’m there. As before, I can’t give much energy thinking about it until I’m in the room rehearsing or sound-checking. It’s actually really refreshing when I’ve spent my life worrying about the future. My daughter really has freed me from all that and taken it all for herself! The band are always so good though, and it’s like a little family now, so I don’t feel too nervous anymore. I feel really comfortable in that space, and the RAH shows are always like a big family get together, just bigger, with far less alcohol, and a lot grander!!
10. I know time is precious, but could we be seeing any YVA solo performances any time soon?
It’s definitely on the cards.
11. It's been two years since we interviewed you about 'Hype Machine', how are you feeling about social media these days?
Still shit and I hate it, I’m totally addicted.
12. 'Grandeur' looks back from a position of strength, if you could tell your younger self anything about going forward, what would it be?
It’s interesting that you say that because for me Grandeur is about facing my mental health and finding myself coming up short. Only I could be to blame for how I navigated all that, and the ending is just me lamenting all the subconscious, safe decisions I made instead of throwing myself at life. Do Not Descend is more representative of where I’m at now, and if I could say anything to my younger self, it would be, ‘it’s easier said than done, but just say yes. Don’t hesitate. The only thing waiting around the corner is your life. If you don’t go out and look at it, you’ll never have one.”
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Listen to and download the new YVA EP ‘Delusions of Grandeur’ on her Bandcamp page, as well as her previous works.
Support YVA on Patreon for exclusive access to demos, covers and livestream sessions.
See YVA performing with Nitin Sawhney at the Royal Albert Hall in October, tickets are available here.
Follow YVA on Instagram @yva_music, on Twitter @YVAOfficial, TikTok @yva_official, and on Facebook @YVAmusicuk.
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