Grace Elizabeth Harvey announces new EP 'Songs Of Devotion', out 16th October

 Liverpool folk singer-songwriter Grace Elizabeth Harvey today announces a new EP Songs Of Devotion, out 16th October and shares lead single 'The Dream Of Common Language'. The new EP will mark Harvey's first body of work since her spring 2025 debut EP Other Faith.

Inspired by discovering Adrienne Rich's poetry collection The Dream of a Common Language in a charity shop, new single 'The Dream Of Common Language' opens conversationally over fingerpicked acoustic guitar before blooming into a sprawling instrumental passage.

Scattered with fragmented images of cigarette papers, hazel-coloured eyes and cold telephone lines, both the single and forthcoming EP were recorded live at producer Gus White's residential studio, The Barn, alongside double bassist Sam Crooks and drummer Lloyd Haines

Mixed and mastered to tape, birdsong drifts through open windows as Harvey's delicate - almost spoken-word delivery - sits at the centre of a performance shaped by both the sound of language and its meaning; Harvey's lyrics balancing unusual, ambiguous phrasing with strikingly precise imagery, allowing the cadence of words to become part of the music itself.

Harvey said: "It’s a song about giving up on love to pursue the search for deeper philosophical understanding, in the face of language and its failures. The dream of a common language is a dream to be seen, to be understood and to rely on words to communicate what we feel and desire. It appears to us when the blind faith we have in others, often the strongest and most delusional when in love, breaks down, revealing itself as just a dream, a fiction, a wish.

"The song mentions a recurring dream I have where I feel I am screaming but no sound is coming out, or it does and I can’t understand why I am so angry or upset in the dream. I am quite a stoic person, coping with life through fantasy and goodwill, so this is maybe the unconscious outlet for pent up disappointment and injustice."

Growing up on the Wirral, Harvey taught herself guitar before falling in love with the cello, later specialising in Baroque music through the Junior Royal Northern College of Music before studying English Literature and Philosophy at Durham University.

Using open tunings, informed by her background in Baroque cello, Harvey approaches the guitar as a second melodic voice in her writing, its counter-melodies and harmonic movement becoming as expressive as her lyrics themselves.

Across Songs Of Devotion, Harvey returns again and again to moments where communication breaks down, as she explains:

"I am always addressing a question when I write, the songs I write in a year will be the product of the same questioning that is circling around, brought on by a combination of lived experience and what I have read/written/am discovering about myself and the world," Harvey notes.

"For my last EP, it was faith (religious and non religious, I’m not a spiritual person), for this EP it is language and miscommunication. The songs are an effort to either communicate the feeling of this tension, pull apart the question, or answer it. I see them as collections of songs - that is very important."

Written during a year spent moving between Liverpool, London and Manchester, Songs Of Devotion emerged from train journeys, second-hand bookshops, borrowed sofas and journals filled wherever moments presented themselves.

Since releasing her debut EP Other Faith, Grace Elizabeth Harvey has toured extensively across the UK, sharing stages with Josienne Clarke, Villagers, James Yorkston, Chris Brain, Chloe Foy and Florist, winning the Young Songwriter Competition and receiving support from BBC Introducing, and recently being awarded PPL's Momentum Accelerator Fund.

Grace Elizabeth Harvey's new EP Songs Of Devotion is out 16th October digitally and on 10" vinyl. New single 'The Dream Of Common Language' is out now. Grace Elizabeth Harvey plays tour dates across Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield over the coming months.

LIVE DATES

• 9th August - Liverpool, Artefact Coffee Shop
• 21st August - London, Morocco Bound Bookshop
• 23rd August - Manchester, The Art of Tea
• 12th Sep - Manchester, The Met (w/ Ed Blunt)
• 15th Sep - Liverpool, Philharmonic Music Room (w/ Tessa Rose Jackson)
• 15th October - Liverpool, Rough Trade
• 16th October - Sheffield, Cafe No. 9
• 25th October - Manchester, Castle Hotel
• 29th October - London, Green Note
• Songs Of Devotion 

EP track list

1. An Ode

2. Devotion

3. Where Tomorrow Meets Today

4. The Dream Of Common Language

5. Forget