Lucie Silvas “Unbreakable Us”

So often where a musician is from or calls home locks them in a little box with a label slapped on that reads “[fill in genre here].” This ain’t no new concept, duh. It’s called marketing and helps keep the music-biz-masters knowing where to slip&slot the songs and albums they work with. But sometimes, even knowing so deep down in my soul that that’s how it works, I still find my knee jerking when someone mentions a particular style of music or a locale known for that style. And sometimes that knee jerks into my forehead so hard that I get some much-needed sense knocked into my noggin.

Lucie Silvas just did that for me. She’s currently making an awesome racket in Nashville by way of hometown New Zealand and formative-years London. Her single “Unbreakable Us,” the first release off a self-titled EP coming February 3, is so forceful as to stop any kind of random category cramming from taking place. With a voice that can alternately break your heart and make you want to get up and take action, even if that’s just forceful swaying or fist-pumping, her beautiful yearning cuts right to your heart. Instrumentation of all sorts blend banjo with percussion with a cresting guitar surge that lifts her powerful voice right up to the top of the mountain.

Boundaries fall: I could sense this being heard with arms swaying over head in a place you worship, on a street where you protest, in a hot sweaty club and beyond. As she sings in the song “This isn’t over yet” and the walls come tumbling down!