Shyness, as a young man once mused, is nice. It’s always a submissive play, and therefore a source of enormous power in any romantic encounter, regardless of whether it arrives as a conduit of blushing anxiety or professional coquetry. For Shura, another coy Mancunian, it’s the emotional bedrock of her work, stitched together from a young lifetime’s archive of rom-com cliché: hair nervously swept out of faces; stolen glances across classrooms and lockers; awkward smiles exchanged over the protagonist’s frankly bizarre refusal to carry her books in a goddamn bag like everyone else. Now she’s roped in pop ubiquity Greg Kurstin to co-write some bangers for her debut album, Nothing’s Real, is the 25-year-old about to start using her outside voice?
Matthew Neale 