Tag: Poppy Rose

Devizine Launchpad on Sunday

Okay you lovely lot, who are deffo coming The Festival of Discovery this weekend across Devizes, and who, deffo, going to pay us a visit at Albion Place, yesterday I highlighted all the wonderful acts we have performing on Saturday, but we do it all again on Sunday too…..

So here’s what we have lined up on Sunday, and it is equally as amazing as Saturday, so don’t over do it the day the before, and find us, same time, from 11:30 until 5:30pm at Albion Place in Sidmouth Street. Here’s who we have playing for us; ooh, I’m so excited and couldn’t hide it even if I wanted too!

Read about Saturday HERE, otherwise, read on about Sunday below….

11:30: Tamsin Antignani

From Devizes and performing as Tamsin Rose, at fifteen Tamsin already has built an impressive portfolio both as a singer-songwriter and guitarist, and acting. Tamsin attends Stagecoach, and has performed in numerous stage shows and musicals, including the poignant lead as Anne Frank for the Wharf Theatre.

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12:05: Lois Millington

Lois is from Devizes, currently studying at Sixth Form near Winchester. Lois is our youngest writer for Devizine, ever! She also performs at open mics.

12:40: Indigo Avenue

Indigo Avenue is a duo consisting of Rufus Townsend and …….. Rufus is Trowbridge based, and the guitarist for Devizes-own riot grrrl band Steatopygous, who have recently toured with The Pump’s Sketchbook Records.

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13:30: Alfie Crinion

Alife is sixteen, and a singer-songwriter from Warminster who has already taken on stages in Warminster, Frome and Trowbridge. He busks in Bath regularly, sharing his original music and covers with the world. His original music follows a blend of indie rock, with RnB and chill guitar music.

This summer Alfie was invited on stage by frontman of the Kooks, Luke Pritchard, to play guitar with the band in front of thousands of people during their set at the Boardmasters Festival in Cornwall.

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14:20: Orla and Jack

Orla is a singer-songwriter from Bath, and she brings with her Jack Hughes, as an acoustic duo who have been performing together for a few years in various bands. Orla played Womad’s launchpod stage, and I met her first at Courting Ghost’s Three Trees Festival at Trowbridge Town Hall.

In our review of this brilliant festival I called her performance “clearly one to watch. With crystal vocals she gave us some divine originals, including a particularly poignant one called Mouthwash, and made Crowded House’s principal her own.”

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15:05: Seren Alyssa

Seren is a folk singer-songwriter from Warminster with a voice you won’t forget.

Seren performs a mixture of original songs and covers. “My favourite covers to perform are Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield, and Black Star by Radiohead,” she tells me. “I first started performing in May 2024, and since then I have performed at CorFest 2025, Swinterfest, and have supported Irish folk musicians in Salisbury including The Henry Girls, Daoirí Farrell, and Tim Eady and Mike McGoldrick. I am inspired by a mix of artists/musicians and genres such as folk, indie, pop, indie rock, and jazz.”

Seren regularly performs with Meg Hoy, who performed as our headliner on Saturday.

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15:50: Poppy Rose

Poppy Rose is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and vocal coach from Bath, known for original acoustic pop. We’ve been reviewing her recordings for a few years now, but I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting her in person, until now. James of BBC Introducing in the West played her newly released and completely unique EP, Let’s Go Swimming.

Poppy also sings at functions such as weddings.

Website

16:40: Ruby Darbyshire

Ruby is a Scottish born singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist currently residing in Bradford on Avon. Ruby is likely no stranger to Devizes, regularly playing our venues and festivals here, as well as busking with bagpipes.

Ruby grew up playing music anywhere she could. From her first performance at the Edinburgh fringe festival, to Celtic connections and many folk festivals around Scotland, Ruby’s background created the best foundation for her ongoing career in music.

Her second EP released in August 2025 has created a stir. Her debut single Caller Unknown, with help from Tim Burgess of the Charlatans and produced by Freddie Cowan of The Vaccines, was first played on BBC6. Ruby’s other music has found its way into Celtic music radio, Radio X, BBC introducing South West, BBC Bristol, Cornwall and Devon as well as Bath Radio and Radio Wilts and many local radio live lounge sessions. Awarded the Best Female Solo Artists at the 2025 Wiltshire Music Awards and Second Place Instrumentalist as a Highland Piper, opening the awards event as the special guest.

Website

Let’s Go Swimming with Poppy Rose

Two years ago we fondly reviewed I’m Ready Now, a debut EP from Bath’s Poppy Rose. I praised her unique take, her thoughtful prose and intelligent metaphors, but it was a collection of songs each with separate thoughts. Poppy’s new EP, Let’s Go Swimming is on another level, has a singular theme throughout, and a certain sound that relates, whilst also massively improving on uniqueness, prose and metaphor…..

The cover suggests Poppy likes swimming, especially when she was younger, therefore the writings are whimsical reflections on childhood, and the sound interprets the emotions and innocence of a visit to the swimming baths, perhaps with hidden metaphors, perhaps not! Nothing is forced upon you here, that option is left entirely up to the listener; all you need is some goggles.

The running order presents a timelined narrative. The opening tune is motivational, upbeat joyful pop, the excitement when the suggestion of a trip to the pool is accepted. The second is a playful rap duet featuring Moritz Finn Kleffmann (Finn, Prince of Whales,) and amusingly reflects on the joys of being in the pool. It’s lots of splishing, sploshing fun, returning you to a blissful childhood state of purity.

Now Poppy has reverted you to a childlike state, you’re a kid again, and enjoying the moment. But do you remember how it was, mates, showing off, diving in, and you’ve not conquered that fear of taking the first leap? The third tune of four calms the excitement with a moody ambient reflection of overcoming your fears; Dive represents doubt in your abilities, and peer pressure, sublimely. You loved it after you took that first plunge, didn’t you? And that is precisely what you must do with this EP, trust in Poppy!

Once the opening excitement has waned by the realisation you didn’t break any water speed records, as you imagined you would have, the acceptance of a good time regardless, and the fact you gave it your best, there’s a sleepy finale; young Poppy is tired, and wants to go home, and the music perfectly reflects the mood and sentiment, to the point a cascade of afterthoughts will waterslide through your mind, of those wonderful days of being taken swimming as a child, or taking your own children swimming.  

It is, in a word, joyful, but brilliantly encompassing too. A wonderful take on a simple everyday activity, rolled into a running concept, a diary entry, and delivered with a simple sound of early electronica meets acoustic work, which exquisitely matches the theme. What I love about this is a child would relish with incorruptibility at its lucidity and playful imagination, while an adult would do likewise, just nostalgically. And in this, I cannot compare it to anything else other than the mighty whimsical rapper, Gecko.

Pass me my water-wings, I really fancy a quick dip myself after listening to that!

Link-Tree

Poppy Rose, Ready Now….

Not being able to hold a note myself, I tip my hat to any musician in a band. Yet there’s something so much more valiant, rudimentary, and intrinsically honest about the solo singer-songwriter, the personal touch of an acoustic performer; as the title of her debut album suggests, Poppy Rose has this…..

The key to a good singer-songwriter lies in the proximity of thoughts between the artist and their audience, and how they relate. If done well, the listener feels they know a little something about the singer. I’ve never met Poppy. I came across her music via a Facebook chat. But I’ve come away after one sitting of her new album, I’m Ready Now, thinking that I know her, and that’s the goal rather than the benchmark of an amazing acoustic singer-songwriter….. 

The album opens with No In Between, elucidating Poppy doesn’t do moderation, she is an all-or-nothing girl, and we’re off, getting to know the innermost thoughts of this twenty-five-year-old creative soul from Bath. 

It’s thoughtfully played out prose, with intelligent metaphors which build throughout the ten tracks, but more importantly, it’s dreamily unique and divinely expressed. The metaphors of the intimacy in the second tune are rinsed in personal observations, the third tune, more dejected in romantic theme; Fool is her first single released from the album. If these are characters in her narrative they appear to bear her own crosses and devotions equally, either this or Poppy can write classic fiction akin to Jane Austen!

Similar to what Chippenham’s Meg is putting out in both content and delivery, it’s first-hand folk, idiosyncratic reflection, and we love what Meg is putting out, it’s impossible not too, in my honest opinion. The confusion, trickery and learning of it within the game of love never wanes with age, but there’s something coming of age in Poppy’s subjects, perhaps none more so than The Wrong One, which even states her naivety in the words. If you’re not young (like me!) you still relate, because you lived it, and survived to tell the tale, though, Poppy tells it expressively in haunting songs, and it’s something to behold.

Poppy poses in Resolution Records in Bath, looking deservedly chuffed! You can find limited edition gold glitter cassettes of “I’m Ready Now” in there!

Five tunes in and we’ve swapped guitar for piano, complimenting her heart-clenching and soulful vocals better may be debatable, either instrument works, but piano always rewards it a more europic ambience, as the songs tend to sit in the more dejected moods of Poppy. Seven songs in now, Fragile suggests this honesty, the title track following this lifts the pessimism.…slightly, but whatever the mood, Poppy sets it sublimely and evocatively.

If ‘body shaming’ is a Gen Z construct, it is so only by modern terminology. If you think mocking people for their body shape or size is a new thing you’ll be sadly mistaken. But it is something highlighted as harassment far less abstract and taboo nowadays, and dealing with such bullying inspires Poppy’s penultimate song on I’m Ready Now. I Love my Body is a poignant reflection of wellbeing, a calling to anyone suffering misgivings about themselves physically. Whilst still a solitary deliberation, this track is perhaps the standout as it contains a universal message.

What surprises me most is Spotify has this tune, I Love my Body, listed as a previous single, dated 2019. I know I’m not so good at maths, but if this places Poppy aged twenty when she wrote this, she is truly a prodigy. As I said at the beginning, I don’t know Poppy, but to express such a sentiment and deliver it so profoundly as a message to others at any young age, is nothing short of magical.

So to not leave us downhearted, Poppy’s final tune, Joy, is brimful of romantic optimism, including a geographical reference akin to Springsteen’s The River. This album is homemade lemonade, moreish, yet in recording one’s thoughts so young I believe, and hope we’re only skimming the surface of what is to come from this skilled wordsmith and performer. Have a listen, see what you think, because I’m blown away!

Find Poppy’s Music on Facebook or Instagram

LinkTree HERE

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