Pictures

Katie Melua - Pictures

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CD Details

Artist: Katie Melua
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2009-05-05
Music Label: Dramatico
Soundtracks:

Mary Pickford
Its All in My Head
If the Lights Go Out
What I Miss About You
Spellbound
What It Says on the Tin
Scary Films
Perfect Circle
Ghost Town
If You Were a Sailboat
Dirty Dice
In My Secret Life

Music reviews of Pictures

Music Review: "Stay away from the light, Carol-Ann"
Rating: 1 Stars

First off, I have to admit that I'm only reviewing the first two-thirds or so of this album, and then only on one listen. I was subjected to it by - get this - a London cabbie (No, it WASN"T Mitch Winehouse - haha!) as I was innocently trying to go about my business from Tufnell Park to Tulse Hill.

Does it sound as though I'm digressing a bit? Au contraire, I've just completed the Katie Melua correspondence course in lyric writing. With flying colours. Only the NHS turned me down for a lobotomy ("non-urgent", they claimed), so I'm frantically licking lead pipes and dosing on Valium to reach the intellectual trough necessary to pen the type of ditties that her fans say are "charming", "refreshingly ingenuous", "an antidote to the cynicism of modern life", etc etc ad nauseum. Can I just remind you all that KM makes music for the type of people who turn off Classic FM if they hear a bit of Stravinsky come on?

Anyway, I think I've managed to sum up the general "feel" of this work. Katie CAN sing, but this CD is still horrible - the auditory equivalent of a Holly Hobbie diary (YES, I'm over 30 - want to make something out of it?). Indulge me in a toe-curling Melua-style metaphor if you will, and I'll tell you that this diary contains such thrilling entries as "Went for a picnic today. Isn't it peculiar how jam always tastes better from those little individual pots like you get in buffet breakfasts in hotels? It's a good thing that they're recyclable." And, "Today, Mike [Batt], my producer told me all about Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and how they set up their own film studio. I suppose that's a bit like what we've done, except I don't eat flowers." OK, you won't find these actual lyrics on the album, but I'm being metaphorical, innit?

So, to get back to my unsettling story: My erstwhile driver asked me, "You don't mind if I play a CD of mine, do you, mate?" How was I know that failing to demur to this seemingly polite enquiry was comparable to inviting a vampire into one's home? Admittedly, KM is not Diamanda Galas (more's the pity), so why were my ears practically BLEEDING after the first track - the tiresome Pickford/Fairbanks "biopic" she's currently promoting. This bilge was enough to put me into post-traumatic stress disorder at least as far as, let's see, Kennington.

But I was conscious enough to be able to report that "Spellbound" is not a pop/jazz cover of the Siouxsie and the Banshees classic. THAT might have been a vaguely diverting enterprise. Neither is Ghost Town anything to do with The Specials. Fortunately, by the end of my horror ride, the CD had not quite reached the staggeringly icky If You Were A Sailboat (if only he/she were a freaking rodeo horse - she needs a good shake-up), which I also first heard in a taxi, wondering all the while how it had ever got playlisted. Is it all part of a fiendish conspiracy by our beloved Mayor Ken Livingstone and his cronies to get us all on to buses at all times?

By now, many of Katie's disgruntled admirers will be screaming: "If you hate it so much, why review it at all?" and I have to concede that her records sell. A lot. Even now. Think of it as humanitarian work. Wasn't it Edmund Burke who first said some facsimile of: "All that's necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"? Katie will probably tell you that it was, in fact, Buster Keaton ;o)

Some Tube [subway] stations in our fair capital now pipe classical music into their ticket halls to deter loitering ne'er-do-wells and grafitti "taggers". Can anyone confirm or deny for me the rumour that plans to use KM's musical musings were abandoned after it was found in trials to turn both potential troublemakers and passengers homicidally twitchy?

Does this seem all a bit, oh, I dunno, negative? Let's see, if fearsome UK glamour model, TV presenter and all-round professional slagger-offer Jordan had written (OK, dictated) this review, how would she "balance" it so as not to appear bitchy.

Oh yeah: "Of course, I've got nothing against Katie Melua personally and I wish her every success in her career."

POSTSCRIPT: All is not lost - If you are genuinely curious about some really great female singers from the UK, I suggest you check out my LIST on this subject - where you'll see I'm not always such a sour old so-and-so.

More Pictures free music reviews:
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Description of Pictures

Katie Melua was born in Georgia (former USSR) in 1984, growing up under the communist regime in the capital, Tbilisi. The family left Georgia when Katie was eight and moved to Belfast where her father got a job as a heart surgeon. Katie didn't always want to be a singer or songwriter. Her ambition when she was thirteen was to be a politician or a historian "I honestly thought I'd be able to bring peace to the world...if I ruled it!)" The family lived in Belfast for five years before moving to South East London. At sixteen, Katie joined the BRIT School for Performing Arts.

Composer/producer Mike Batt paid a visit to the school. Katie signed to Batt's record label Dramatico, but stayed at the BRIT School to complete her studies where she graduated with distinction in July 2003.

Unable to secure a contract with a Major record company, Katie and Mike decided to put her album Call Off The Search (containing the song "The Closest Thing To Crazy") out on Batt's own, small record label. After an appearance on The Royal Variety Show, 19 year old Katie shot to the top of the UK album charts and became the biggest selling female artist for the next two years. Her two albums, (the second of which contained the hit "Nine Million Bicycles") have sold more than 10 million copies to date. She and her family took British nationality in 2005. In December 2007, Katie topped the charts with a duet with her idol, the late Eva Cassidy, entitled "What A Wonderful World", with proceeds from the single going to support the UK work of the British Red Cross.

The past years have been quite extraordinary for Katie (now 24). She has had a Dutch tulip named in her honor, met and played for Nelson Mandela in South Africa visiting his Aids charity, has become a hard working Ambassador for Save The Children, raced at 160mph around Grand Prix, flown a plane, learned to dive and parachute freefall, set a Guinness World Record for deepest underwater concert (19 miles under water on a gas rig in the North Sea), and picked up various prestigious awards within Europe, including a World Music Award, a Golden Camera Award, and two German Echo Awards.

Katie's third studio album, Pictures, confirms Katie's status as a unique and remarkable vocalist, and reveals the third chapter of what is destined to be a long musical career.

There is something innately British about Katie Melua?s appeal, her style reminiscent of former '60s UK legend Lulu, especially in songs that combine adult contemporary pop with a slight crooning style ("All In My Head," "If You Were A Sailboat"). Whatever her je-ne-sais-quality is, Melua?s popularity in Europe is massive; she has sold more CDs in Britain than any other female artist in both 2005 and 2006. At the time of the release of her third CD, Pictures, sales of her first two were at an impressive eight million sold and climbing. Many compare her sound and style to Norah Jones and Diana Krall, but that is quite misleading, as she is neither as bluesy as Jones nor as jazzy as Krall, landing in fact much more in the middle of the road stylistically. Cover songs are in short supply on this disc (unlike Melua?s prior releases); Pictures contains only one cover tune, a Motown-affected Leonard Cohen song entitled "In My Secret Life." While all the other songs are originals, many do significantly resemble Cohen cuts, pairing poetry with melancholy ("If The Lights Go Out," "Dirty Dice"). One word of advice to the unfamiliar; the former Russian resident has a vibrato that at times approaches a warble, so although Melua?s music clearly has massive appeal to an entire continent, North American eardrums would do well to preview her sonic wares prior to purchasing the whole disc. --Denise Sheppard