REVIEWS
Left Open in a Room, 2019 (Lost & Lonesome, Little Lake Records and Oscarson Records)
"Roleff’s enduring, folk-leaning music draws comparisons with understated artists such as Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake. Its ageless beauty is imbued with a sense of history despite its current context, even Roleff herself at times appearing to have emerged from some mystical time capsule." - Greg Stone, Who The Hell
"Sure to stay with fans of Julie Byrne or Joni Mitchell, the track is stunningly composed and masterfully executed - a perfect follow up to Lucy’s gorgeous 2016 record This Paradise." - Eucalypt Music
"The second release from the Melbourne based folk singer is sparse yet delicately and lovingly crafted with layered flute, acoustic guitar and most strikingly, a 36-string harp, all cradling the singer-songwriter's striking and sweeping voice." - Triple R FM
“If you like understated folk music, like Sibylle Baier or Linda Perhacs or music from the canyon in California in the 70s, I think you’re going to love Lucy. When I hear Lucy’s music, I think of Nick Drake - that same sense of intimacy, rawness, and immediacy of a pin dropping.” - Tim Shiel, Double J
”The avenues of communication shared by music and visual arts – and where they diverge – are not strange to Lucy. She walks the line between traditional folk music and a burgeoning career as an oil painter, and where Lucy chooses to link these two worlds is where the heart of her artistry is found. The romantic and the mundane, the traditional and the contemporary, the personal and the universal.” - Nicholas Kennedy, Triple R FM
”This song seems so otherworldly – its the type of track that makes me want to close my eyes and immerse myself in – but from a lyrical point of view it’s very grounded in the here and now. Beautiful stuff.” - Timber and Steel
”I’m content to describe this latest from Lucy Roleff as ‘the quintessence of folk music’ without fear of being challenged for hyperbole, [i] because I could care less, and [ii] with its acoustic plucked guitar, occasional flutes, sweet [angelic at times] harmony, and, above all, the clarity of Roleff’s singing, we have the key tropes of a classic type served with skill and feel.” - Some Diurnal Aural Awe (UK)
"Upon my first few listens, I marvelled at her voice; it has this ability to rise and almost quiver as it reaches higher notes, yet always controlled and personable." - Austin Town Hall (USA)
”Roleff’s deeper voice and wistfully restrained songwriting recalls Nico with some Joni Mitchell highlights or even Aldous Harding (especially her older, folkier stuff). I think there’s a similar sense of control at play in Harding and Roleff, though Harding uses hers to produce awkwardness and (hilarious) emotional terrorism. Roleff, by contrast, is more serene, she works like she’s curating a zen garden and she’d never dream of turning it upside-down, raked stones flying in all directions.” - Chris Cobcroft, 4ZZZ
"At the centre is Roleff’s instantly recognisable and beguilingly insistent voice based as it is on elements of European folk tradition but delivered as always in definitively idiosyncratic style." - Indie30
”The first impression is powerful, depth, the unrelenting progression of feeling, the ease with which Lucy Roleff glides through her songs. The stable structure of the compositions is a fitting basis for her angelic and ethereal singing.” - Das Klienicum (Germany)
"This boundless folk spirit perpetuates, in a remarkably natural way, the ancient formula of picked acoustic strings and a voice full of dusty magic." - Rockerilla Magazine (Italy)
”Roleff’s voice is one of those hidden gems that the universe of underground productions can sometimes give away… this album is pure enchantment for sensitive souls.” - Music Won’t Save You (Italy)
This Paradise, 2016 (Lost & Lonesome)
"Aspen is an icy, crystallised piece of chamber folk; delicate and piercing as a stalactite. The focal point of Roleff’s music is, of course, her voice: this quavering, rather deep husk, that has the blunt European tongue of singers like Nico and Sibylle Baier" - Nick Stillman, Happy.com
"This Paradise is shaping up to be one of 2016’s most stark but beautiful records" - Nicholas Kennedy, Who The Hell
”Roleff’s own music inhabits an acoustic world of a different, though parallel, kind of intimacy, whereby she may be perceived as taking the classical concept of Lieder forward into the arguably equally rarefied province of the folk chanteuse. Her songs are intimate and carefully considered jewel-like creations that are pitched somewhere between hauntingly intense and beautifully serene, starkly and precisely scored yet on occasion surprisingly elusive.” - Folk Radio (UK)
"Roleff produces folk music that has nothing to do with the ‘it’s acoustic so it must be folk’ likes of the beard-strokers by numbers, but instead comparisons could be drawn with the likes of Joanna Newsom, Nick Drake and Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins. This is one of the best things I have heard this year" - 17 Seconds (Scotland)
"Disarming, melancholic, spacious atmosphere. It's the stuff that late nights alone were made for" - Just Music That I Like (UK)
"Distinctly her own artist, she fits neatly into the folk genre along with a great number of peers, however she doesn't play the same game as them. Like Nick Drake or Joni Mitchell before her, Roleff has definitive ambitions for her music and she remains stoically faithful to them. She sings with a haunting, intimate voice — so close and quiet that you'd swear she was whispering in your ear" ★★★★ - Lukas Murphy, The Music
"...the ease with which Lucy Roleff soars through her songs, the stable structure of her composition is a vehicle for her angel like ethereal rendition" - Das Klienicum (Germany)
"'Every Time' highlights the intimate atmosphere of composition and the solemnity of her music" - So What Musica (Italy)
"A voice that comes from far away in space and time... light years away from any fleeting modern trend... which slowly open up, revealing ancient colours and existing fragrances" - Music Won't Save You (Italy)
"There is a timeless quality to the music of Lucy Roleff. Relishing the time-honoured tropes of contemporary folk music, Lucy’s music wouldn’t sound out of place if it had been released at any time over the past 60 years. Her delicate melodies sit atop elegantly restrained accompaniment, allowing the songs to carve their own path, like water gradually eroding jagged rock into polished smooth surfaces." - Greg Stone, Who The Hell
"Even when Roleff isn’t revelling in the past, whether true or not; she’s playing out constructed situations to exorcise fears from all corners of life – motherhood, abandonment – hallmarks of someone that is still young, but surrounded by signs of ageing and adulthood regardless. Architecturally, the album stands as a structure that’s seemingly formless, yet also refined in the way it moves from one song to the next like an M.C. Escher painting – a beautiful home in which you’ll walk through a door expecting a living room with a softly crackling fireplace, but instead finding yourself among trees, fog, or a city square." - Nicholas Kennedy, Collapse Board
Longbows, 2013
“Described as a "dark" Joni Mitchell, the Melbourne-based artist combines melancholic harmonies with ethereal arrangements to produce a sound that is both haunting and emotionally captivating” - ★★★★ Tianna Nadalin, The Herald Sun
“Roleff's brooding voice drives dark track Bodies with the air of a commanding, old-world priestess” - ★★★★ Stephanie Tell, The Music
“Lucy Roleff delivers something a little different than what her classical training in flute, piano and opera might suggest. A beautifully restrained and delicate affair on the EP Longbows” - Robbie Buck, The Inside Sleeve. Radio National
”Roleff has a bewitching debut EP in Longbows... It seems to stand outside of any one era, to which Roleff perhaps owes her classical training. Vocally she’s been compared to Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins as well as Bridget St. John – although we hear Movietone ourselves” - Mess+Noise
“If you dig Tara Jane O'Neil or Marissa Nadler, then Melbourne has a gem in the waiting for you” - Adam Yee, Mobile Industries
“Lucy’s voice is just stunning – I really love what she’s been doing with Alex as Magic Hands, but I’m utterly spellbound by some of what she’s put out just under her own name. I love that she seems to be channeling a kind of folk music that has nothing to do with banjos or mandolins or beards or Mumfords – an idea of folk music that is more universal, that kind of story- telling that existed before popular music, before rock, blues, country etc. Timeless music.” - Tim Shiel, Double J
”Lucy is a multi-talent - a great singer and songwriter, possessed with a contralto voice that sounds like she’s channeling something ancient and deep. Lucy is mesmerising and her songs are thoroughly captivating” - Ken Stringfellow (The Posies, Big Star)
”The sparkling music of Lucy Roleff, who plays fractured compositions interspersed with flourishes of genuine warmth. Gorgeous Stuff.” - Barry Cliffe, Blitzgigs.de
”If you really want that lyrical folk to go down smooth you're going to want a touch of poetry to the lyrics, a lethargic wistfulness to the tone and orchestral instrumentation flying distantly around a voice like birds. This is how it is with Lucy Roleff and her EP Longbows” - The Thousands
”'Volkshaus' is really, really beautiful. I love how timeless it is. It could be a lost relic from some past time” - Jaye Kranz, Brighter Later
”Lucy’s an accomplished musician trained in opera, piano, and flute. She’s taken those classical influences and used them to inform something much more modern in her single. It’s simply stunning, unhurried with exquisitely lush instrumentation” - Sounds of Oz.com
”Achingly haunting and deeply poetic, Roleff’s music captures the nostalgia of the troubadour, along with lyrical art song” - Roni Shewan, Shiver Canyon
”What a voice!” - Paul Butler, 3MBS Radio