“The reality of it always felt a little out of reach,” Tor Maries says of making music for a living. Speaking in a Bristol pub in November, two months before the release of her anticipated second album Cacti, she seems gently stunned by the events of the last few years. Not just the obvious – Brexit, Covid, the cost-of-living crisis, take your pick – but the success of her solo project Billy Nomates.
Recorded with Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, Billy Nomates’ 2020 debut established Maries as a unique talent. She moved between a velvety coo and white-hot snarl, pulling inspiration from the fluidity of her hero David Bowie and the weathered gut-punch of singer-songwriters such as Kim Carnes. The music was sick-to-the-back-teeth no wave, bitterly kicking dead-end jobs, sexism and social inequalities like rocks down the road. Standout single No was a bass-driven slice of dirty realism, its slogan-esque lyrics unfolding in sharp spoken word like a feminist twist on Renton’s “choose life” monologue: “No to protein shakes and mirrors / Yes to running at night fearless.”
