To Karen and Shelly, Alisha's Attic was a project deep-rooted in their hearts from an early age.
The pair are sisters, born fourteen months apart in the early seventies. Karen was born in Chadwell Heath, Essex on the 8th of January 1971 and Shelly the following year in Barking, Essex on the 20th of March. Both sisters have long had an ambition to be a part of the music scene and they began by sending off various demo tapes to record companies.
Alisha's Attic were discovered by Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics fame) after they sent him a demo tape recorded at home. Impressed, Mercury Records immediately signed the band and their debut album Alisha Rules The World soon followed. It was released in November 1996 to hugely positive reviews, going platinum in the following year.
The girls were highly successful with their promotional tours in 1996 and 1997, touring with Australian group INXS and with the Lilith Fair in the United States. They also gave stunning headlining performances in various venues around the UK. Their popularity grew as their frequency of live appearances increased.
The time soon come in 1998 to begin recording a follow up to their excellent debut album. The band made the decision to start recording with a new producer, Mark Plati, in New York. Illumina was born and released in the UK in October 1998—almost two years after the debut—to mixed reviews. The band's image and sound had changed since the first album and it began to seem like people had forgotten about Alisha's Attic. The first single from the new album, The Incidentals, did well, reaching number thirteen in its first week of release and staying in the charts for seven weeks. However, the charts, populated by rehashes of old songs and manufactured groups, soon became an inhospitable place.
Moving on to a new location and a new producer, Alisha's Attic wrote and recorded an album in Mendocino, California, completely different from their previous work. Time had passed since the first album and maturity in the music and lyrics clearly shone through. Working with Bill Bottrell, one of Sheryl Crowe's producers, The House We Built was released as Alisha's Attic's third studio album.
In 2001, Mercury records chose to purge their inventory of artists and they parted company with Alisha's Attic. The sisters decided to pursue solo careers—Shelly as a solo singer-songwriter and Karen as a lyricist for high-profile pop artists such as the Minogue sisters. However, one of the gems to come after the parting of Alisha's Attic from their record company was The Vaults I, a collection of previously unreleased and untouched, but magically beautiful songs.
