I first wanted to be a country music star,” says Freya Beer, which is something of a surprise given her Louise Brooks via Morticia Addams look. “My parents played Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash and that’s where my love for music began. But then I was bought Horses by Patti Smith in my early teens and that changed everything… music and poetry.”
Smith makes more sense as an influence than Dolly Parton for this rising star musician and poet, who is sitting backstage at the London Palladium ready to support John Cooper Clarke. The poems she reads that night on a huge stage to a pretty blokey crowd are personal, vulnerable stories about womanhood and each one feels like a little victory. On record, her persona becomes much louder, her songs melodic-alternative rock of the Garbage or Joan Jett variety. And while her heroes remain poetic outlaws like Dylan Thomas, the aim is to hit the charts with her music.
