About She Makes War

She Makes War is the gloom-pop solo project of Laura Kidd: multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and digital polymath. Debut album "Disarm" was released in September 2010 to high praise, gaining SMW an ardent international following and leading to support slots with Midge Ure, Chris T-T, Viv Albertine and Tom Williams and the Boat. In 2011, around touring South America as Tricky's bassist and singing in Carina Round's band, SMW won Soundcloud's Backstage Pass Award and ran a wildly successful Pledge Music campaign raising 100% of the funds needed to record "Little Battles", the new album set for release on 9th April 2012. 'Little Battles' was co-produced by She Makes War and Myles Clarke (Sparkadia, Kid Harpoon, Belakiss) in the summer of 2011. Recorded just around the corner from the Hackney riots, London's crackling tension is echoed within the 15 songs but if love is a battlefield this album is a peaceful protest - honest and vulnerable yet steely and sure of itself, all melancholy romance and wide-eyed hope for the future. Driven by Kidd's bewitching, pastoral vocals and layered guitars and supported by a plethora of additional instruments from ukulele to autoharp, melodica, piano, violin, harp, saxophone and three part recorder ensemble, the songs are punctuated by a patchwork of field recordings from her global travels as hired gun. The album opens to the sound of a Japanese mountaintop tannoy and closes on a summer rain shower in South London, bells chime in Mexico and Buenos Aires, breakdancers throw themselves around a New York subway carriage and news helicopters circle Mare Street - and within the world of She Makes War this all makes perfect sense. It's about collisions - analogue with digital, war with peace and technology with nature. Take lead single 'In This Boat', released digitally and as a homemade Valentine's card on February 14th with early radio support from BBC 6 Music. Brooding, lovesick and philosophical, the body prepares for voyage with special guests Chris T-T, Milly McGregor (Dott Reed) and Bass (Djevara) providing tempestuous piano, violin and vocal accompaniment respectively, the rain beating down on Kidd's swirling high sea of guitar lines and swooning vocals. Elsewhere the Carpenters-esque 'Butterflies' warns of the dangers of pretty boys in bands, a rich blend of harp, ukulele and violin sweetening the blow, 'Exit Strategy' explores emotional paranoia and a capella extravaganza 'Delete' describes the anguish of indecision. 'May Our Daughters Return Home' features guest vocalists Tasmin Archer, Annie Gardiner (Hysterical Injury), Dana Jade and Anna Madeleine as a solemn choir, singing the haunting tale of Mexico's lost daughters, and 'Magpie Heart' and 'Never Was' hint at narrowly averted disaster. Blending urgent, grungey guitars with processed beats, heady pop melodies and a liberal dusting of glitter, She Makes War has drawn comparisons to artists from Blur to Blood Red Shoes, Melissa Auf der Maur, Eels and Bat For Lashes.