A trip-hop inspired set of lush, emotional songs with a dark undercurrent - The Daily Telegraph

A bright and adventurous album - The Daily Mirror

The 22-year-old artist has finally found who she truly is  - IDOL

A showcase for her contralto vocal range, The Sting is a soulful album that should garner Cilmi a bigger audience - The Independent

Cilmi has found her atma and has developed a nostalgic, dark, moody and avant-garde soul sound Flavour Magazine

Music that is deep from the heart Pillow Magazine

She's lost none of her pop nous - The Guardian
 
Gabriella Cilmi has announced a much-anticipated five-date tour of the UK for March 2014.  The tour, commencing at The Haunt in Brighton on March 4, will be the first opportunity to hear tracks from Cilmi’s acclaimed new album The Sting (out November 11 through Sweetness Tunes) performed live, including the current single ‘Symmetry’. Tickets for the tour are on sale now.
 
Cilmi’s new album comes produced by Eliot James (Jamie N Commons, Two Door Cinema Club) and marks a clear departure in both look and sound for the Australian-Italian singer-songwriter.  Described by the Daily Telegraph as, “a trip-hop inspired set of lush, emotional songs with a dark undercurrent” The Sting offers a more atmospheric and restrained musical milieu, which brings out the tones and resonances in Gabriella’s remarkable voice.

Five years earlier, aged just 16, Gabriella became known around the world for her soulful smash ‘Sweet About Me’ (over 2 million copies sold, top ten in 16 countries, 37 consecutive weeks in the UK singles chart, and over 27 million views and counting on Youtube). Her Island-released debut album Lessons To Be Learned went top ten in a dozen countries, notching up a million sales, and Gabriella toured extensively, including Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in 2009.
 
2009 saw the follow-up Ten, on which Gabriella was pressurised into adopting a more sexy image and dance-orientated musical direction. Cilmi is today rather sanguine about the experience, saying ‘It’s the oldest story in the music business, I don’t want to get bitter about it. I learned some lessons the hard way. I felt everything was taken out of my hands. I brainwashed myself into thinking everything was OK but you keep running into yourself when things aren’t right’.
 
When the album promotions came to an end, certain she didn’t want to stay on this path, Cilmi resolved to ‘Sort my shit out. I was 19, and I wasn’t ready to give up on myself yet’. This meant the difficult yet overdue departure from Island, and the management she had been under since the age of 13 - ‘I found out that ‘no’ can be a very powerful word- I had to divorce all of them. It wasn’t easy. But in a way that was my fuel to create something I really love’.
 
Gabriella embarked on a musical voyage of discovery, writing and recording with members of her live band. “I was searching for a sound that reflected the way I felt inside, which was quite vulnerable, and traumatised” she says of her new album.  “I wanted it to sound the way Italian neo-realist photographs look, that post-war, ruined glamour which is really gritty and heart-breaking. I was listening to a lot of Trip Hop, that 90s Bristol sound, Portishead and Tricky. But also singer-songwriters I had always loved, Neil Young, John Martyn. And old soul records, Bessie Smith, Otis Redding. It all went in there.”

4th March             Brighton                                                The Haunt
5th March             Bristol                                                   Thekla
6th March-            Nottingham                                          Bodega
7th March             Manchester                                           Deaf Institute
8th March             Glasgow                                                King Tuts