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Graham Clark
Music Features Writer
@Maxximum23Clark
10:19 AM 19th October 2020
arts

Katie Melua - Album No. 8 (BMG Records)

 
I must admit, I’ve never really been a fan of Katie Melua, always finding her songs a bit dreary.

This new album has changed my opinion of her - the songs are still mostly slow ones but they have more depth and you find yourself remembering the melodies long after the album finishes.

Take for example the second track in, English Manner. The track was co-written with bassist Tim Harris with a lyric that is allusive and ambiguous. The album opens up though with A Love Like That that asks the question how can you keep the first flames of love burning through the decades? Possibly a fitting lyric as her marriage has come to an end recently.

She tends to look back to her younger years on Leaving The Mountain which was inspired by a trip she made when her father took her to the Caucasus mountains by the Black Sea.

The track Joy reminds me of Love and Affection by Joan Armatrading, whilst the jazzy Voices in the Night sees her in a new sphere with the balmy syncopations coming to the fore. If you think of one of the early Sade tracks you will hear what I mean.

Heading Home appears to be about going back to her native Georgia, but it is on the track Your Longing Is Gone which works well with the added strings. It has that same vibe as Wonder Wall by Oasis, a group that you would probably never mention in the same breath as Katie Melua!

Her fans have had to wait four years for this new album but under the wing of producer and arranger Leo Abrahams she has made an album that makes casual listeners such as myself hear her in a new light.

I rate the album 3 out of 5