You can't blame a work of art for its eventual audience, is what The Duke would suggest. When Paul was scribbling those Emails to the Corinthians or whoever a couple thousand years ago, he couldn't have known that Jerry Falwell would be a fan. It's not Eminem's fault that much of his fanbase exhibits exactly the kind of bigoted, thuggish yob mentality that he so subtly satirizes. And you can't really fault Katie Melua for the fairly certain inevitability that her debut album, Call Off The Search, will serve as the requisite soundscape at cheese-tasting parties from now till whenever the hell someone digs up another round of Eva Cassidy demos.
Young Miss Melua has a voice worth exhibiting, make no mistake about it. When she lets rip over a self-penned ditty like Faraway Voice, a song dedicated to the aforementioned Cassidy, a song that should by all rights be cloying dreck, it's impossible not to be impressed as all hell with how she wraps her larynx around some really rather complex melodic tomfoolery.
But the occasional bursts of inspiration, be it in the form of the 12-bar barroom blues of My Aphrodisiac Is You, a song that brings to mind that old standard about I Get A Kick Out Of You by, I think, Slipknot, or the subtly funky second track, Crawling Up A Hill, are beaten asunder by the sheer stifling, well, middle classness of it all.
It's so conservative, so faceless, that at times you may be fooled into thinking a song has an alarmingly evocative lyric, but no, it's just cause you dozed off twenty minutes ago and had a dream about this time when you were nine years old. You can't be blamed though, man, most of these numbers are indistinguishable from one another.
The whole thing suffers from an absence of heart, of the "passion". At times it feels like there's something really soulful and powerful underway, but no, it's just another production-line easy listening Norah Jones-lite affair.
You could pound this disc to fuck with a pickaxe for a month and I doubt it would leave a scratch. It's solid granite; Impenetrable, bloodless and mighty painful when it gets you in the ears.
The final track, for instance, Lilac Wine, starts with a sinister tone and a raspy verse that brings to mind Bille Holiday's original recording of Strange Fruit. Katie Melua doesn't want to talk about lynchings or segregation, though, she's just concerned about some fella or other. The "love" thing. You might yawn if you weren't sniggering.
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
Oh, this was nice: this could have been playing on repeat for four days and you'd only notice when the stereo leaped into the nearest bathtub to rid itself of the insufferable torment.
2 - Mark Saleski
man, you guys are brutal.
...think i'll brew up a response.
3 - laura
Unless Katie, and more importantly, her producers, stop taking notes every time Norah Jones lets a half-melodic fart, she won't be taken very seriously either.
LOL! That's hilarious!
But so true. I agreed with most of this. Except I liked the song "Belfast" (though you're right about the title being contrived) - it was pretty much the only track I liked.
4 - Andrew Ian Dodge
This CD does smack of "quick we need our own Norah Jones!" Its dull as dishwater and lacks the nuance and quality of Norah Jonas' debut. I think KM has more in common with boredom on a stick Dido thank NJ. This CD is not bad, just nothing special.
5 - Phillip Winn
So, um, you didn't like the album? :-)
6 - louise
"Where is this Broadway that she talks about walking down? Maybe I missed it on the at least numerous occasions I have walked the length of Belfast"
Just for the record....Broadway is the name of the street area that leads to the Falls area in belfast. So yes it does exist and you wouldve worked that one out if youd listened to the lyrics of the song. Otherwise, an interesting review.