Elles Bailey

The smoky-voiced singer returns to Cottingham, this time as our Friday night headliner...

There’s a steeliness that courses through Elles Bailey’s latest album, Can’t Take My Story Away. Fiercely independent, the British singer-songwriter has been steadily honing her craft for the better part of a decade. Her magnificent voice – instantly recognisable, full of grit – weaves stories of resilience and survival, of hope and new beginnings. In her music, we find liberation as she picks at the threads of human connection, carefully unravelling the truths we might not have realised about ourselves.

“My most recent albums felt very much like they were snapshots in time,” Bailey explains. “Once your debut is out, the ball starts rolling, so those records were made very quickly, released and toured.” By contrast, Can’t Take My Story Away was created over a three-year period, using songs whose origins can be traced back almost 10 years. “There’s definitely an empowerment to this record,” she says. “I feel like that has actually evolved since I first started making it – as though I was a different person.”