Head Above Water

‘Head Above Water’ is another example of the rich patchwork of influences at the heart of Nectar’s writing in full bloom.Having been raised in “a working class area in Milton-Keynes”, Nectar grew up around so many talented people from different cultural backgrounds, but she noticed that what helped kids stay on the right track was “keeping them occupied with creative spaces. It’s so sad that only financially stable families are able to provide creative spaces for their kids. I think it should be for everyone. Everyone is creative, and they should be provided the means to explore that.” Nectar’s Ghanaian amateur saxophone-player father would help create that space for her and fill the house with jazz and Highlife music, while her English mother worked as an artist and fashion pattern cutter; exposed to a creative way of life and a wide variety of sounds, both mainstream and niche, it was able to open Nectar’s ears to a world of sonic possibility. Nectar credits the early 2010’s wave of London singers (Winehouse, Duffy) for making her want to move to the capital, but it was the people she met when she arrived that truly steered Nectar towards the warm, jazz-infused sound that she inhabits today.. “I grew up with Erykah Badu and D’Angelo, but uni was when I dived really deep into it; listening to their albums, studying it,” she says. “I had friends who loved the same music so we made bands who would cover that music and then write our own stuff inspired by it, and from there it developed. Having released a few songs independently over the past couple of years, her debut EP Nothing To Lose merged her improvisational ethos of the jam sessions that she cut her teeth playing in, with the more streamlined pop noise of co- writers and producers Bad Sounds (Arlo Parks, Rose Gray) and Tobie Tripp (Tom Misch, Dave).