BY NICK CANTWELL

Magic is the latest release from Eleri, a singer songwriter based in Swansea. The song opens up her 2023 album Carnival and now has its own individual spotlight as a single release. The song opens with Eleri asking the listener to ‘roll up, roll up, the show’s about to start’ alongside an energetic guitar and drum beat. The Welsh singer has been compared to artists as diverse as Kacey Musgraves, London Grammar and Faith Hill, and in the opening of the single there’s a vigour to it that brings KT Tunstall to mind.

Those opening lyrics point to a circus, and in this case that circus points to the dating scene. Eleri explains – ‘Magic was really the catalyst song for this whole album to become ‘The Carnival’, its ultimately about falling in love, and finding true magical love beneath all of the smoke and mirrors, snake charmers and clowns of dating – behind the circus of it all’.

There’s clever wordplay from Eleri throughout the song that illuminates the magic she has found. ‘Hold up, hold up, how do you make feel so sure, got my ticket for my Mister mystery tour, smoky nights and fire kisses, I don’t need no genie wishes, I got the real thing’.

At just two minutes and twenty three seconds this is a track filled with a fire and a zest, highlighted by the singer declaring that she ‘always makes magic with you’. A look at the artwork shows Eleri stood looking out from inky blackness, with a red mist surrounding her. This highlights the magical aspect of the song, while also adding a level of darkness to it. It’s little surprise that circuses and fairs have long been the subject of dark shows and movies and here, mentions of snake charmers, smoke and mirrors and slight of hand give a sense of that intrigue around the dating game. As an album track it’s the perfect opening to Carnival, opening the release with a bang, with the promise of so much more to come.

Eleri is an artist on the rise with a slew of festivals and full band shows on the horizon in 2024. This autumn the Wales based artist will be heading out to Nashville TN, Kentucky, Ohio and North Carolina work with renowned songwriters, producers and photographers on new material for her next project.

Magic is a fantastic introduction for readers of Country Lowdown to Eleri, an artist who is ploughing her own furrow and building an ever-growing reputation on the country music scene.