Artist:Julia Fordham
Song: Italy
Album: Concrete Love
Rating: 6/10
I'm still figuring out how exactly to approach this journal, which is very apparent in how every post has different formatting so far. I'm thinking I probably want something a little like a formalized album review style and then a bunch of stream of consciousness posts about whatever songs I'm excited abouot at the moment on top of that.
Reviews won't actually be very meaty in any case. I want to keep text to a minimum and keep the focus on the music.
Anyway, on to the album.
I discovered Julia Fordham a while ago where I heard some of her vocal jazz numbers. I thought that's what she did as an artist, but as it turns out, she's more of an adult-contemporary, adult-alternative artist. This is not exactly my favorite musical territory, but I do find myself attracted to her voice and I do find her to be a well above averagely talented songwriter. Thus, I've been exploring her discography a bit and bought a few ridiculously cheap albums of hers and I'm just going to give a brief few thoughts on this one for now.
Basically, the album starts off really strong with the songs 'Love' and 'Italy'. Great, sensual vocals and some careful arrangements that I find very effective, if very subtle. It would be easy to dismiss this as dull music for housewives, but I really feel like there's something going on here worth admiring. I sadly can't post 'Love', since it's nowhere to be found on Youtube, but I did find 'Italy', so here you go:
This is not the sort of music that jumps in your face and spells out it's awesomeness in neon letters right away. It's a slow burner for sure, but I really find that this is a particularly well written song and the nuances of her singing really works well for me. her deep, soft voice is a thing of wonder and I really love how she's able to slide into these clear, beautiful higher notes very fluidly.
Sadly, this album devolves further and further into adult-contemporary schmaltz the further in we go. By the time track number 12 finishes things off, I'm feeling pretty disappointed. She's got better albums, believe me, but this one started off so strong and just slowly deflated after that. The first 5 tracks or so are good; the rest oscillates between varying degrees of 'ok' and 'meh'. A couple bonus tracks lifted things a bit again, but by the time we get to those two tracks, my good will is all but used up.
What's really interesting to me about listening to music like this is perhaps, oddly enough, how boring the genre usually is. Let me put it this way: It's like looking for gold nuggets in the unlikeliest of places. When you finally find one, you can't belive your eyes! Adult-contemporary and adult-alternative are generally dirty words in my eyes, but I have found several happy exceptions to the rule. I believe there's good music in every genre and I'm going to keep digging for ice cubes in the desert because of this.
Basically, I like Julia Fordham a lot, but the dull side of her discography makes it a bit hard to sell anyone on her merits.