These are my top 10 acoustic artists, now i spent a long time trying to decide an order but i just couldn’t rank them. I adore all of these artists equally so welcome, read and judge = D

Kristy Gallacher

Kristy Gallacher is a young and up and coming artist from Coventry, she tours around constantly wowing the crowd with her stunning voice and guitar work that will leave you wondering how so much talent is exuded from such a small, blonde, girl. Ms Gallacher is building a name for herself supporting acts such as Scott Mathews Nerina Pallot and Nizlopi. Her British identity is proudly displayed through her elegant voice and her lyrics about her real life experiences hit home in a way so many of us can relate to. Kristy’s music really is a rare find, you often find yourself is  small acoustic bar with people talking louder than the volume being played by the artists on stage, until Kristy takes the stage and the entire place become quiet in amazement.
To Check out Kritsy’s Myspace go to

http://www.myspace.com/kgunplugged

To watch her interview with balcony Tv and a live performance of anticipation check out this video

Ray Lamontagne

Ray Lamontagne (pronounced La-mon-tain) is an American singer songwriter with an extraordinary voice. A man who in 1999 worked in a shoe factory awoke one day to the music of Steven Stills and decided to be a singer songwriter. With a talent like his he was destined to make it, his voice is brimming with tone and his songs span through the easy listening to jazzier sounds. The man, to put it frankly, is a genius and well worth checking out.

Ray (yeah I’m going to imagine we are on first name terms) has written an incredible country song in dedication to the white stripes drummer Meg White, a clever romantic message in the form of a song that will make you smile with lyrics such as ‘ baby you’re the bomb, old Jack is great don’t get me wrong but this is your song’

http://www.myspace.com/raylamontagne

Listen to his incredible cover of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy here

or his hilarious top of the pops performance of trouble where the entire crowd are stuck not quite sure hope to dance to an acoustic singer songwriter. = D

Colin Hay

Colin Hay is an Australian/ Scottish musician who during the 80’s was the front man for the band ‘Men At Work’. He later spread his wings and became a singer songwriter and has blessed us all with his dry and brutally honest pieces.
Hay has appeared in scrubs singing and acting and has also has his beautiful song ‘ I just don’t think I’ll ever get over you’ used on the soundtrack for Zak Braff’s Garden State. In a sickeningly romantic tale Hay’s wife Cecelia provides the backing vocals at Colin’s current live performances.
http://www.myspace.com/colinhay

Here is his brilliant appearance in Scrubs

Fink

Fink aka Fin Greenall is an blues singer guitarist from Brighton. Fin grew up being heavily influenced by hip hop and took great pleasure out of performing DJ sets. However within his house he was always set to go one way, his father was a folk musician and his mother was a music manager so past a certain age Fin’s Bluesey genes kicked in and Fink was born. A Beautiful kind of blues Fink’s music is something we can all relate to, telling stories of life love and loss from a different perspective avoiding the cliché and pointing out things we maybe never think of. Lyrics such as ‘ I really miss your blueberry pancakes, I don’t buy maple syrup in Asda no more’ manage to shine through and come across without sounding cheesey. Fink really is a musician you should check out. Here Is a live performance of his song Biscuits

http://www.myspace.com/finkmusic

Bright Eyes

Bright Eyes are an American band that consists of singer-songwriter/guitarist Conor Oberst, multi-instrumentalist/producer Mike Mogis, Nate Walcott, and a rotating lineup of collaborators from Omaha. Bright eyes have two sides to them, the acoutic bleating emotive side and the electronic experimental side. They showed these two sides when releasing two albums on January the 25th 2005, the acoustic masterpiece that is ‘I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning’ and the electro beat ridden ‘Digital Ash In A Digital Urn’

The best thing about Bright eyes is the imperfection, the recording quality is often poor and at times Conor’s voice can be dire. But this human side is refreshingly honest and Bright eyes have won over crowds all around the world. Bright eyes are set to release one last album in 2010 putting an end to the band in a tidy manner. Here is their beautiful tale entitled ‘ At the bottom of everything’

Dashboard Confessional

Dashboard started with frontman to ‘Further Seems Forever’ Chris Carrabba deciding to go solo. He stated performing solo acoustic and took full advantage of the ever growing emo crowd at the time. He eventually pulled in the rest of the full band line up including former further seems forever band mate Jerry Castellanos.

He has an extremely whiney American voice but it really works within the context of the music. Check out the beautiful 5/4 piece that is Clean Breaks.

David Gray

David Gray is an acoustic singer songwriter born in Manchester and raised in Wales. Although releasing his first studio album in 1993 he only made the big time 6 years later with his album ‘White Ladder’ Which sold ridiculous amounts all over the world and shot straight to number one of the U.k Album chart. He also had a single ‘Babylon’ hit number 5 in the singles chart. But this man is far more than a few hits.

This is a lovely live performance of Night blindness.

Damien Rice

Of course Damien Rice, no acoustic list would be complete without him. Damien was the frontman of 90’s rockband Juniper but after much interference from the record label Polygram Mr Rice left to do it alone. He busked his way around Europe and returned to Ireland. After sending his demo to his second cousin David Arnold, Arnold was so impressed that he bought him a mobile recording studio and Damien’s debut went straight to number 8 in the English charts. Damien is quiet and timid at times and Intense and powerful at others. My favourite story about Mr Rice was that his record producer asked him how his current relationship was. After Damien replied that it was all going great the record producer looked upset and replied ‘it’s a shame you always write your best stuff when you are down’

Here is Damien covering Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah live.

Fionn Regan

Fionn is another acoustic singer songwriter from ireland, his guitar work is amazing. His styles are more based in traditional folk picking and is a breath of fresh air from the basic chord strumming we often find ourselves listening to with acoustic artists. Fionn played glastonbury in 2007 and is still very much making his name, His story is yet to be told. Here is Fionn’s song ‘ Be Good Or Be Gone’ in a great music video

Travis

Ok i’m sorry i had to put in Travis, mainly because i think they hold a special place in so many people’s hearts. Sure they have a lot of tunes that we can all sing and groan at but a lot of their work has interesting structure and beautiful chord progressions. How many people do you know who bought ‘The man who’ as their first album? Lots? That’s because Travis are great and everyone forgets about them. Let’s listen to Fran healy and the boys singing ‘writing to reach you’

Disagree with my choices?

Been introduced to someone here who you now love?

Think i missed someone out?

Think i am an idiot and my opinions count for nothing?

Let me know, drop me a comment below and i will be sure to at least read it once and say cool someone commented my blog.

Kieran GWAG

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