She loves Costello and sings songs about revenge, guilt, sorrow and loss. Just don't get her started on the Brit school
*Hometown*: London.
*The lineup*: Olivia Sebastianelli (vocals, guitar).
*The background*: Olivia Sebastianelli is an Italian-English 19-year-old from south London enamoured of Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde and influenced by everyone from Alison Krauss to Alice in Chains. She's a little bit pop, a little bit – well, not grunge exactly, but there is more to her than winsome acoustica. She might be a young woman wielding a guitar but she doesn't consider herself a singer-songwriter; her sound is fuller and more electric than that suggests. She prefers the word "storyteller", and winces at the term "performer"– she left a major record company recently after they tried to get her to record her every waking move with a camera. She doesn't do video diaries. She doesn't fit in that world, or belong to that generation. She hates iPods and loves vinyl, and her hero is Elvis Costello. Her favourite song of his is Alison, which she believes is about a prostitute. She loves it so much she entered a competition especially so she could sing a version of it. At school, when she was 11. She won.
Revenge and guilt are the only emotions she understands. And loss, and regret. Her best song, Rose of Stone, is haunted by memories of being taunted and bullied at school, where she was the only Rage Against the Machine fan in a class full of Spice Girls and Britney kids. One of her "friends" threw herself down some stairs, just so she could blame Olivia. "To have that constantly for years really hurts," she says. "You start to wonder if there is something wrong with you." Surprisingly, she has yet to write a song about the perfect murder, but she has written one about wannabe starlets called B-Movie (ring any bells?), one about the suffering endured by immigrants, and another about the Arab spring. She doesn't believe there has been a decent protest song since punk. She also recently got into a Twitter-fight with Pixie Lott about the value or otherwise of the Brit school and fame academies in general. She won that as well.
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen
The daughter of a businesswoman and a tattooed hot-rod enthusiast, Sebastianelli is as characterful as you could want. Some of that character comes across in her music. We haven't yet heard her 12-track album (told you she was old school) but we do have three tracks that promise good things. They've been produced by Dan "Enter Shikari" Weller and we're not alone in liking them. Ray Davies of the Kinks saw her live and came backstage expressly to tell her he thought her songs, sung in a rich, huskily emotive voice that belies her years, were "hauntingly beautiful". Rose of Stone is the one, though, the one where she harmonises with herself like a doleful choir and is marked by intimations of cold creeping terror. The guitar figure is literally dread-ful – not that it's bad but that it contains portents of unpleasantness, "tiny sharp reminders" of what was and might be. It comes accompanied by a video filmed in the chapel of the school where she was so cruelly mistreated by her peers. Add self-torment to that list of emotions she understands. Sunset presents another side of Olivia Sebastianelli: this time, the folkish English rose. Only watch out for the thorns. Despite the Day opens with strummed acoustic chords that you just know are going to explode into grungy electric ones – not for nothing has she been described as the missing link between Stevie Nicks and Dave Grohl. So she's not quite the female Costello - that paradigm has yet to be realised. But we still reckon she'd look great in a suit and glasses hunched over a tripod.
*The buzz*: "Olivia's voice carries a richness and an intensity beyond her years … she hovers somewhere between Bat for Lashes and the xx"– The Sun.
*The truth*: She's this year's model.
*Most likely to*: Go to Clapham.
*Least likely to*: Go to Chelsea.
*What to buy*: Rose of Stone is available for free download.
*File next to*: Judie Tzuke, Indiana, Stevie Nicks, A Girl Called Ruth.
*Links*: facebook.com/OliviaSebastianelli.
*Thursday's new band*: Casual Sex. Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.
*Hometown*: London.
*The lineup*: Olivia Sebastianelli (vocals, guitar).
*The background*: Olivia Sebastianelli is an Italian-English 19-year-old from south London enamoured of Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde and influenced by everyone from Alison Krauss to Alice in Chains. She's a little bit pop, a little bit – well, not grunge exactly, but there is more to her than winsome acoustica. She might be a young woman wielding a guitar but she doesn't consider herself a singer-songwriter; her sound is fuller and more electric than that suggests. She prefers the word "storyteller", and winces at the term "performer"– she left a major record company recently after they tried to get her to record her every waking move with a camera. She doesn't do video diaries. She doesn't fit in that world, or belong to that generation. She hates iPods and loves vinyl, and her hero is Elvis Costello. Her favourite song of his is Alison, which she believes is about a prostitute. She loves it so much she entered a competition especially so she could sing a version of it. At school, when she was 11. She won.
Revenge and guilt are the only emotions she understands. And loss, and regret. Her best song, Rose of Stone, is haunted by memories of being taunted and bullied at school, where she was the only Rage Against the Machine fan in a class full of Spice Girls and Britney kids. One of her "friends" threw herself down some stairs, just so she could blame Olivia. "To have that constantly for years really hurts," she says. "You start to wonder if there is something wrong with you." Surprisingly, she has yet to write a song about the perfect murder, but she has written one about wannabe starlets called B-Movie (ring any bells?), one about the suffering endured by immigrants, and another about the Arab spring. She doesn't believe there has been a decent protest song since punk. She also recently got into a Twitter-fight with Pixie Lott about the value or otherwise of the Brit school and fame academies in general. She won that as well.
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen
The daughter of a businesswoman and a tattooed hot-rod enthusiast, Sebastianelli is as characterful as you could want. Some of that character comes across in her music. We haven't yet heard her 12-track album (told you she was old school) but we do have three tracks that promise good things. They've been produced by Dan "Enter Shikari" Weller and we're not alone in liking them. Ray Davies of the Kinks saw her live and came backstage expressly to tell her he thought her songs, sung in a rich, huskily emotive voice that belies her years, were "hauntingly beautiful". Rose of Stone is the one, though, the one where she harmonises with herself like a doleful choir and is marked by intimations of cold creeping terror. The guitar figure is literally dread-ful – not that it's bad but that it contains portents of unpleasantness, "tiny sharp reminders" of what was and might be. It comes accompanied by a video filmed in the chapel of the school where she was so cruelly mistreated by her peers. Add self-torment to that list of emotions she understands. Sunset presents another side of Olivia Sebastianelli: this time, the folkish English rose. Only watch out for the thorns. Despite the Day opens with strummed acoustic chords that you just know are going to explode into grungy electric ones – not for nothing has she been described as the missing link between Stevie Nicks and Dave Grohl. So she's not quite the female Costello - that paradigm has yet to be realised. But we still reckon she'd look great in a suit and glasses hunched over a tripod.
*The buzz*: "Olivia's voice carries a richness and an intensity beyond her years … she hovers somewhere between Bat for Lashes and the xx"– The Sun.
*The truth*: She's this year's model.
*Most likely to*: Go to Clapham.
*Least likely to*: Go to Chelsea.
*What to buy*: Rose of Stone is available for free download.
*File next to*: Judie Tzuke, Indiana, Stevie Nicks, A Girl Called Ruth.
*Links*: facebook.com/OliviaSebastianelli.
*Thursday's new band*: Casual Sex. Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.