Description
Album No 8 is her first outing in four years post several albums produced by MIKE BATT. It’s also an admirable divorce album free from recrimination. The songwriter’s album about the end of her seven-year marriage is at once dreamy, spooky, precise and mature
This time out she worked with the classically trained Leo Abrahams, a class act who’s worked with some of the great names of popular music as player, arranger and producer.
So, this is music for grown-ups, 10 elegantly arranged songs – 15 on the deluxe edition, with acoustic versions plus a cover of Randy Newman’s “Forever” – with Melua’s voice very much to the fore. The set was effectively finished in February but Abrahams felt Melua had more in her so invited her to his Hoxton studios to run through the vocals once again, “just for back-up”. In the end, most of the vocals are from what he calls “one of the most extraordinary performances I’ve witnessed in the studio”. . It’s a nicely paced collection full of light and air and pleasing textures.
