Plymouth girl Amber wears her heart on her sleeve

PLYMOUTH singer songwriter Amber Jade Smith has just launched her career-changing single Echo and it's quite remarkable.

- BY CLARE ROBINSON

Delivered in Amber's lush deep husky vocal, it's urgent, compelling an emotive heart on sleeve offering in which she says she has, for the first time, managed to completely open up and express her real emotions, laying bare her vulnerability. Aided by the sublime production of Josiah Manning at Momentum Studios, it is a real tour de force.

Amber launched the single with an event at Sawan on Vauxhall Street in November and it was the first time she had performed her own music with a band, never having believed in herself enough before. "I was standing on the stage looking at all these people who had paid to come and see me and couldn't quite believe it - the whole thing was very emotional," she says. "And I got so much great feedback from people who connected with the music. I'd been avoiding confronting certain issues but when I dared to do it, it resonated so much with people and made me realise I was not alone."