‘Survive’ by Charlotte Elizabeth EP Review

The Survive EP is a fascinating project put together by songwriter Charlotte Elizabeth. Charlotte isn’t a musician, but she asked some of the biggest and best names in UK country to record her songs and the ‘Survive’ EP is the result, an EP inspired by Charlotte’s fight against Cancer when younger.

The record starts with ‘Love on the Edge’ recorded by Ash Cooper. It’s pretty unusual for us to review a song with a male vocalist here at Belles and Gals but his voice is fantastic (check out his ‘Ash Cooper Band’ too). The song is a hard hitting one and grabs your attention straight away, which for an opening number is exactly what you want.

We featured ‘Man on the Moon’ a couple of weeks ago and Charlotte said then that ‘People talk about planets aligning, our paths being written in the stars etc etc and I took this metaphor to inspire the song. Stanford Road took this idea and created a beautiful, melodic song and I am very proud to have worked with them’. And this is indeed, a beautiful, melodic song.

‘Shatter Like Glass’ is performed by Angels with Dirty Faces and co-written with Stuart Landon. This was the first single from the EP and this is just a fantastic country song. This song has a slight alt-country feel which is really appealing and really grabs hold hard.

‘Stronger’ comes next, recorded by Belles and Gals favourite Kim Tink and when you listen to this you’ll know why. I absolutely love the way this song is arranged and Kim’s vocals are on point throughout.  The song is very different to the rest of the EP, the contrast working fantastically – this has got ‘single’ written all over for it me. Love this.

If you’ve followed Belles and Gals from the start you’ll know all about the brilliant Emma Moore – you might even have seen her headline our Liverpool show at the weekend. Emma sings ‘Survive’ and this is an amazingly powerful number, perfectly suited to Emma’s vocals, the song rousing and emotional throughout. A real tour de force.

The final song is ‘Life I Once Knew’ performed by the brilliant Thorne Hill. This is a perfect ending to the EP, a song that really highlights the great performance of Thorne, while the production is just spot on. This is a song that I’d really like to see live.

There is little doubt after listening to this EP that Charlotte is an exceptional songwriter, her songs bringing out some really fantastic performances throughout the EP. With an EP performed by a number of different artists, there is always a danger that the record might not flow, but this is certainly NOT the case, the six songs working perfectly in harmony with each other. It might be early in the year, but this is a real live contender for our 2017 EP of the Year already. Wonderful.

To download the EP click here