Bluebird arrives as Ste Forshaw’s most open-hearted work yet. He’s rooted in St Helens and Liverpool’s creative orbit, but the emotional geography of this record reaches far wider, tracing the arc from brokenness to devotion, from wandering to homecoming. The backstory matters here.
Bluebird grew out of the night he met his wife, a turning point that pulled him out of old cycles and into a life built on connection, fatherhood, and the awe of the natural world. Even the EP’s title reaches backward into memory: Donald Campbell’s Bluebird roaring across Lake Coniston, a childhood fascination now folded into lyrics about courage and fragility. And right outside Forshaw’s door, Anthony Gormley’s Another Place casts its long contemplative shadow across the songs.
The record took a year and a half to build, starting with nothing more than voice and guitar before blooming in Francis Johnson’s home studio. Layer by layer, with analogue synths, warm drum machines, airy rhythm guitars, improvised solos, and hushed harmonies, the EP found its shapeshifting indie-soul identity. David Kelly’s live drums, tracked at Briar Street Studios, give everything a heartbeat, and the final mix, printed to cassette, seals the whole record in a warm analogue glow.
The EP opens with “Up at the Top,” where you hear the transformation in real time. The first track shimmers with soft beats and chiming guitars that churn gently under Forshaw’s warm, tender and charismatic voice. He sings like someone who’s steadied himself after years of turbulence, promising, “I won’t let you down, I will meet you at the top,” with the calm conviction of someone who means it.
Later, “When I Think About You” drifts in with soft, minimal guitar strums and an ambient halo of atmospheric sound. Forshaw sings slowly, intimately, and meditatively, letting each word breathe, “I have known it from the moment I saw you, it’s only you.” When the drums finally thump in, warm and sparkling, and the guitars break into a churning solo, it rises like sunrise, patient, glowing, inevitable.
Across its runtime, Bluebird moves between joy, reflection, nostalgia, and devotion with the ease of someone who’s lived all of it and come out the other side with gratitude instead of cynicism. It’s an indie pop EP that holds soul, memory, and hope in equal measure, as it marks Ste Forshaw as an artist finally stepping into his true voice.
Listen to Ste Forshaw’s new EP on Spotify.
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Review by: Naomi Joan