Norwich musician Rosa Walton‘s debut solo album Tell Me It’s A Dream is a warm, colourful collection of songs about love, friendship, freedom and finding beauty in the world. What’s not to love?
Best known as one half of Let’s Eat Grandma, Walton has always had a gift for finding emotion in unexpected places. Here, she allows herself to lean fully into optimism.
“Tell Me It’s A Dream is about being ambitious and seeing enhanced beauty in the world,” she says. “It’s about striving for ultimate freedom. A lot of the attitude in these songs is about following your dreams.”
Take ‘Prettier Things’, featuring her longtime Let’s Eat Grandma bandmate Jenny Hollingworth. Walton describes it as being about “someone in a beautiful garden that we’ve discovered together, flying around as dragonflies. We fly around separately but this is a place where we can always come back to each other.”
The album began life during lockdown before evolving over several years into a record that celebrates creativity, friendship and possibility.
“The idea of doing a solo project was never about stepping away or doing something on my own for the sake of it,” Walton explains. “It started as writing to process things and stay grounded, and it grew into something shaped by the people around me and the joy of making music together.”
Maybe that’s why Tell Me It’s A Dream feels so appealing. At a time when cynicism is often mistaken for intelligence, Rosa Walton has made an album that isn’t afraid to be hopeful.
Rosa Walton heads out on a UK tour in September:
14 September – Glasgow, Hug & Pint
15 September – Manchester, YES Basement
17 September – London, The Lower Third
18 September – Norwich, Voodoo Daddy’s