Her voice measured and characterful, her songsmithery poignant and piercing, East London’s Nectar Woode is indelibly talented. The singer-songwriter is rising through the UK soul space, and mixes her soulful core with jazz, indie and R&B tendencies to amalgamate a breezy and beautiful sound that warms the heart and settles the brain.
Her new EP, “Head Above Water”, is a serene 5-track opus, an utterly effortless and giving listen, full of subtly grand arrangements and gently powerful vocal performances. Woode stops by Wonderland to talk through the sublime body of work, track-by-track.
Listen to “Head Above Water”…
Read Woode’s thoughts…
“How It’s Gotta Be”
“How It’s Gotta Be” sets the scene of a mundane day; when you have to get up early on a Monday morning and go to work or do something you don’t wanna do. You find yourself looking round at the station and realising everyone is in the same place. It is silent on the tube commute and we’re all sharing the same feeling of ‘there’s nothing I can do but it’s how it’s gotta be’. That’s how I’ve felt for many years, multitasking and being creative and just living in London. I wrote this during a transitional time in my life where life wasn’t 100% going my way. It was therapy for me – to accept that it’s okay if things are not going to plan.
“30 Degrees”
This song is summer in a nutshell. It’s a warm summer’s day and you take your blanket and book to the park, you text your crush or friends or loved ones and they happen to be free so you make a day of it! I know it’s nostalgic to think this way in the heart of autumn, but I wanted people to escape into that feeling of summer and lose themselves in it for 3 minutes.
“Tell A Lil Lie”
Sometimes it’s good to tell a lil lie ;)) hehe! It’s all about not being in a good place mentally, but you just wanna get on with the day and show up for your friends and ignore the fact that life is not that great in that moment. So it was a little note to myself and listeners that yeah, I had to tell a lil lie and say that I’m okay just to get through the day. But from this I strongly encourage people to communicate how they feel freely with someone close. This was myself communicating saying I’m not okay but maybe I will be one day.
“Grow”
“Grow” is the most personal song I’ve written to date. I wanted to be vulnerable with the world and let everyone know personal things like my toxic traits and how I had to go through emotionally painful events and struggles to get to the place I’m at now. It’s like a diary entry to myself after all the sadness had come out, and accepting what had happened and needing to move on with my life. Songwriting is like therapy for me and this song reflects how honest I’m tryna be with the world. It’s okay to make mistakes, that’s how we learn!
“Head Above Water”
Ahhh, the title track of the EP means everything to me, quite literally. I had to keep my head above the water, the noise, the pain to get through this year. This was like my mantra that I stood by throughout the darkest moments and the most incredible moments! I’m defo sometimes a person that you can’t tell straight away if I’m upset or in a bad place but I make sure to write about it! “Head Above Water” is how I got through everything to be here today, writing about it to Wonderland Magazine, woop woop!