Louise Latham, a Cardiff native, was involved in a theatre production at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when she first heard Dillon. Shortly afterwards, she began working on her own folk songs with saxophonist Lee Goodall. One of these songs was 'Fatuma', championed by award-winning songwriter Tommy Sands on his Northern Irish radio show.
And then there's Latham's voice -- pure, ethereal, intense, profoundly moving. When she talks about touchstones, she mentions the simplicity and economy of Tracy Chapman's compositions, the big quiet of Tori Amos's Boys For Pele album, and the ambitious scope of Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Yet it was Cara Dillon's eponymously-titled debut that led to an epiphany of sorts for Latham.
It's an aural landscape made visible by Latham on Reclaimed, an alluring collection whose warmth and humanity is a balm in austere times.
