The Staves

Initially comprising three sisters—Emily, Jessica, and Milly Staveley-Taylor —the Staves rode the wave of nu-folk in the wake of the likes of Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons. Their beguiling songs and persuasive harmonies even inspired the press to invent a new genre, "goth folk", to describe the style of their debut album Dead & Born & Grown as it climbed the charts in 2012. The daughters of a teacher and a businessman, they grew up listening to their parents' collection of American folk records and were particularly influenced by Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The sisters gained early experience playing together at open mic shows, graduating to pub gigs, when their time off from university allowed, before deciding to undertake a professional career, culminating in a deal with Atlantic Records and the Dead & Born & Grown album. Another big break occurred when they were invited to sing backing vocals on Tom Jones's 2010 hit "Praise & Blame," impressing producer Ethan Johns so much that he offered to produce their album with his father, the legendary Rolling Stones/Who producer Glyn Johns. They gained much acclaim, too, supporting Bon Iver at Wembley Arena and had a small hit single with "Tongue Behind My Teeth" in 2012. A further slew of EPs followed: 2012's The Motherlode, 2014's Blood I Bled, 2016's Sleeping In A Car, and 2018's Pine Hollow (Live). Meanwhile, they went on to rack up a stash of post-debut albums that began with 2015's If I Was—which went to number 14 in the UK—and continued with 2017's yMusic-assisted The Way is Read. The group released their first album of original material in six years, Good Woman, in 2021 and charted at number 13 in the UK. Emily Staveley-Taylor quit the group before the release of the duo's fifth LP All Now, which spawned singles in the LP title track and "You Held It All."

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