Long-haired, doe-eyed singer-songwriter Isaac Gracie was picked out as a future star after uploading a few scratchy demos to the Internet in 2015 and was quickly dazzling audiences with his his angelic, soaring vocals and fragile, cut-to-the bone ballads which drew comparisons with Jeff Buckley and Ryan Adams.
Growing up in West London, Gracie was a chorister at Ealing Abbey from the age of seven, but the deepening of his voice and a growing interest in Bob Dylan led to him picking up the guitar and writing songs by the age of 14. He inherited some of his writing talent and emotional perceptiveness from his mother, a psychotherapist and published poet, and spent his early career writing about his teenage romances and strained relationship with his father. Gracie recorded his songs on Garageband in his bedroom, before uploading them to Soundcloud. He was just 20 and still at university studying creative writing at the time, but when record company scouts noticed his talent, and Zane Lowe began playing his demo track 'Last Words' on his Beats 1 show on BBC Radio 1, a huge industry buzz started swirling around him.
Expectations grew further when he landed a deal with Virgin EMI and he released EPs 'Songs from My Bedroom' and 'Death of You and I', but Gracie took time to develop his sound with a band and teamed up with producer Markus Dravs (whose previous work includes records with Florence and the Machine and Coldplay). It culminated in the release of his self-titled debut album in 2018, on which his songs were transformed from lo-fi, acoustic lullabies into glossy, radio-friendly anthems as Gracie grew into a more neurotic, tender, contemplative songwriter with tracks like 'Terrified', 'Running On Empty' and 'Reverie'.
