Album: Laura Mvula - Pink Noise | reviews, news & interviews
Album: Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
Album: Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
Mvula's love letter to the Eighties is a heartfelt tour de force
Album number three from Ivor Novello-winning singer-songwriter Laura Mvula sees her paying singularly personal homage to the music of the 1980s.
Whether it’s the euphoric key change of the scene-setting “Safe Passage”, the monolithic beats and interlocking synth lines of “Remedy”, or the minimalist funk of the title track, what Mvula does brilliantly is the way in which she juxtaposes highly distinctive blocks of material – the music can switch from a nasty bass synth line to a huge, all-enveloping pad in the blink of an eye.
It’s when we reach the album’s midway point that Mvula hits you with the stone cold masterpiece that is “Magical”. With drop-dead gorgeous vocal harmonies, an arrangement packed with incredible detail – who doesn’t love a dramatic timpani roll? – a deliciously in-the-pocket groove, plus yet another spine-tingling key change, it’s slightly over four minutes of musical perfection. Lyrically, the song reflects one of the album’s central themes of beginnings and endings.
Other highlights include a duet with Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil on “What Matters”, the rolling bass groove of “Got Me” (surely a nod here to “The Way You Make Me Feel”), and the gloriously widescreen textures of “Before The Dawn”, a song which seems at once both hymnic and filmic, with Mvula’s vocal bathed in the warmest of reverbs. It closes the door on an extraordinary album from a sui generis artist.
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