Joanne Robertson

An acoustic guitarist strumming thick chords or picking out interesting lines, a beautiful voice rendering every phrase with attention and intention, occasional accompaniment from a cello or electronics: Glasgow’s Joanne Roberston has all the hallmarks of a singer-songwriter. But like Grouper or guitarist Roy Montgomery, her music sounds quiet, distant, and faded, as if heard from behind a door down a long hallway; lean into it, and it falls evermore out of focus, an object that will only let you approach so much. What’s more, Robertson—a vaunted painter who was exhibiting at the Institute of Contemporary Arts at an age when most people are negotiating their first entry-level job—is an improviser, playing, singing, and recording these songs as they enter the open door of her mind. “I quite like to let the music or the paint do its thing, and then I start to try to catch it and move it around accordingly,” she once said. “Again, it’s this idea that you don’t know until you start making it.”

Roberston has been releasing albums for two decades, including an early LP for Feeding Tube. But her reputation rose as she became a consistent collaborator to Dean Blunt, working with him on records like Free Jazz and Backstage Raver. This was all preamble, though, for the breakthrough of Blurr, her absorbing 2025 LP of songs “written in between painting sessions and also whilst raising a child.” As Robertson sings, little bits of poetry—“Hang me down upon your faith” or “In the street, you’re a taken course”—beg to be interpreted and then internalized, like a puzzle that looks different to everyone who completes it. Robertson has suggested that basic emotion is the building block of everything she makes; transmitting feelings like the flickering flame of a candle, this music beckons the listener to sort through their own tenderest notions.