Kelly Lee Owens warms up for European tour with show at Rough Trade East

Kelly Lee Owens ‘stirs and mesmerises’ at Rough Trade East. Photograph: Hackney Citizen

Kelly Lee Owens, Jenny Hval collaborator and a hotly tipped solo artist for 2017, treated Shoreditch to an in-store appearance at Rough Trade East on Monday 27 March ahead of her planned return to East London in May.

The Welsh singer-producer played the Nottingham Rough Trade branch the day before arriving in London, on a short promotional hop (her eponymous debut album was released 24 March) that will be followed by a fuller European tour, incorporating a show at Bethnal Green’s The Pickle Factory alongside festivals like Primavera, Øya and Dorset’s End of the Road.

Owens has actually graced the Rough Trade East stage before, in her previous life as bassist/backing vocalist for The History of Apple Pie, a London indie band signed to Hackney’s Marshall Teller Records. She also used to work at the store. Perhaps this contributed to her obvious comfort on stage, which showed through a series of flowing, Kate Bush-like hand gestures as she sang, swayed, and moved between mic and electronics.

However her own musical work is a far different proposition than …Apple Pie’s ’90s rock-worship – songs like the poppy ‘Keep Walking’ and ‘Arthur’ may flail in different directions (the latter even throwing in some birdsong) but share the same icy, Björkian DNA.

The Jenny Hval collaboration ‘Anxi.’ dropped mid-set, with Hval’s vocals playing out over the bone-rattling noise controlled live by Owens. Sometimes the force of the live sound drowned out some of the records likeable grit, but moments like the keening vocal line of show-opening and album-closing ‘8’, and the aching string intro of ‘Lucid’, retained their ability to stir and mesmerise.

In the front row, a girl, no more than seven years old, watched with that peculiar childish look of awe mixed with slight fear, jumping into her father’s arms as the singer reached out to her. She won’t be the last person so affected by Owens this year.

Kelly Lee Owens plays The Pickle Factory (13-14 The Oval, E2 9DU) on 10 May 2017