JAMES HARRIES
GOLDEN VOICE OF THE GOLDEN ERA OF SONGWRITING
BRITISH SINGER-SONGWRITER WHO IS AT HOME IN PRAGUE
Born in Manchester, he performs all over the world, but at home in Prague. And those who know him, know that he sings in a wailing voice a bit sad songs reverberating in the astonished silence of the audience affected by an undue dose of emotions. James' work has been compared by many to the best of Nick Drake, Damien Rice and Jeff Beckley before him, and Rolling Stone magazine has even called him a ‘golden voice’. What's more, we know that he's also a sought-after composer of film soundtracks, and few can imagine Snowboarders, Raffles, Berry or Lidice without his input. He is one of those songwriters who are honored to be able to play even the most instrumentally and musically diverse album in concert with just an acoustic guitar, as exemplified by James' last great album Hiraeth, which in his solitary performance sounds best in venues with an intimate atmosphere, where every verse, guitar ring and his wonderfully urgent voice have nowhere to go and become ‘food for the listener's soul’.
About the album, recorded in the bleak times of Covid, music publicist Ondřej Bezr wrote: "When we listen to it for the first time, from the very first notes we have the inescapable feeling that it is actually a kind of return to the golden age of songwriting in the sixties and seventies. This is the basic setting of the album's atmosphere."
Photo: Marek Musil
