As if lifted straight from a Lana Del Rey video, Celeste Waite’s earliest musical memories are of being driven around in her grandad’s vintage cherry-red Jaguar, listening to Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. “When I was younger it was amazing to me, but as I got older I got used to that music falling upon my ears,” she said in a recent interview.
Fast-forward a couple of decades and Celeste’s own output clearly reflects this formative education. Born in LA, Celeste was three when her parents split and she moved to Essex, and then Brighton with her mother. She wrote her first song at 16, and after her current manager found it online, she ended up releasing an EP, The Milk & The Honey, with Lily Allen’s Bank Holiday Records label in 2017.
The following year, Celeste signed to Polydor, catching the attention of label-mate Michael Kiwanuka, who she’ll tour with next month, and working on a five-track EP, Lately, which she released in March.
Proving Celeste’s deft ability to sever a heartstring, it moves from the soul-tinged jazz of the title track, to sultry toxic love ballad Both Sides of the Moon, via Father’s Son, a heartbreaking examination of absent fathers. Each song offers a different demonstration of her standout voice; at times it’s bellowing and urgent, in softer moments barely more than a languid whisper, but always uniquely arresting.
