This women has been lauded, my has she been lauded. In fact she must have got so weighed down by the stuff that she fell perpetually below radar. Aside from the gust of air that carried her into public consciousness, otherwise known as her 2001 Mercury Prize nomination (for the pretty and gifted ‘Little Black Numbers’), she has remained undeservedly low key. But in a funny way, with a newly skewed hindsight, this album makes that treatment seem justified. Because next to this her previous work does seem rather normal.
It kind of makes sense that an equal broadening and darkening of her horizons should come now, following on from last year’s interesting ‘Relations’ album, covering the likes of Leonard Cohen, Velvet Underground, Teenage Fanclub and Pavement, amongst others, in a complimentary inimitable style. This could be her reaching out to emulate and become great, and it’s logical to presume this change of attitude and that album are indeed related. The common thread running through this new record is how it feels like it was written and recorded in the most stripped down conditions, in the most barren and uncomplicated space, time passed and comfort achieved via poetic confessions, honesty and dirt creeping under the skin. It’s how you imagine a Velvet Underground session was, and that’s before we come to consider the stylistic similarities there.
This album will be, or certainly should be, her making. It is unreservedly and emphatically beautiful, because of and in addition to the fact that it is torn and dirty and discoloured. It basically sees her progress from a woman with an ear for an arrangement and a voice that floats on air to a skilled, liberated sculptor of emotion, chipping away religiously. The lyrics are either achingly stark or deeply considered, but always warmly and engagingly delivered. On two of the most affecting occasions she reflects that “each morning he gets up, I lie and miss his body… it’s not a waste of time, to feel the heat leave the sheets” (‘Breath’) and “what you really want is to fall upwards into the sky, turn the world upside down, so you never stop falling” (‘Beachy Head’ influenced by the infamous suicide spot).
This is an album too where the music has really risen up a join her voice, rather than just accompanying it. ‘Just Like A Birthday’ and ‘Three’ are good examples, the latter opening the album, with rough staccato guitar, languid strings, crystal melodies and hypnotically regular drums forming a potent psychedelic melee. It reminds a little of Elbow’s ‘Fallen Angel’. The musicianship is all instinctively able, but it is her voice that still defines everything, obviously. As with peers like Tanya Donnelly, Damien Rice’s Lisa Hannigan and Kristen Hersh it would be ridiculous to insist otherwise. Here’s suspecting there’s more praise on the way to add to that collection.