Crawley formed Shelleyan Orphan with Jemaur Tayle in the mid-’80s, bonding over a shared affection for the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley—and went on to make whimsical and dreamlike music that could only possibly be compared to the work of Dream Academy or Kate Bush (whose brother Paddy Bush performed along with her drummer on the Shelleyan Orphan album Helleborine).
The band released 4 albums—3 during their original run, and then the album We Have Everything We Need in 2008.
Cure frontman Robert Smith was a fan of theirs, and asked Shelleyan Orphan to open for The Cure’s 1989 Prayer Tour—While on that tour, Caroline Crawley began a relationship with Cure drummer Boris Williams, who contributed to the Shelleyan Orphan albums Humroot, and We Have Everything We Need.
Watch—at the top of the page—Caroline Crawley covering Syd Barret’s Late Night for the This Mortal Coil album Blood—an album where she also contributed vocals for The Lacemaker, Mr Somewhere, and Help Me Lift You Up.
Watch an assortment of Shelleyan Orphan videos below:
Toronto shoegaze outfit Rituals first stirred to life in 2009, a quiet experiment in Adam Seward’s small, dim room, where…
Filled with fire Come to me Suspended with so much pleasure No matter how scared we may be To live…
Be a starlight once more that guides me in the dead of night and when your fire weakens I shall…
Sarcophagus golden carcass Sarcophagus rigor mortis Drenched in cataclysm and curled in dystopian dread, Qual—William Maybelline’s fierce alter ego—seizes the…
Skin sloughed off Exposed rot Sickness spied Wet, weak eyes Lacerated soul Psychodermatology is a medical field that studies the…
Loving something you shouldn’t is like clutching a live wire—painful, charged, and impossible to release. You know it’s wrong, yet…