Fires - Nerina Pallot Album Review

Fires - Nerina Pallot Album Review

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Album Review

Up until now, producing product for her own DIY label: Idaho, and releasing on to iTunes and making the iTunes top 10, Fires gets released on 14th Floor Records (a Warner music company).

Opener Damascus is an instant attention grabber due to it's superb production, and excellent musical accompaniment. Add to the mix Nerina Pallot's beautiful breathy-voiced vocal and you have a recipe for an excellent song. The partnership of a piano and bass, which wend their way through an interesting line, alternately playing independently, then in unison, adds real interest to the track. Reminiscent of a Neil Finn/ Crowded House/ Mitchell Froom production, the track is quite simply superb. Putting such a strong song as the first track is (in my opinion) a great move, as it sucks you in to wanting to hear the remainder of the album – and it doesn't disappoint.

Second track Sophia is much sparser, featuring Nerina's vocal and piano, and demonstrates her vocal range quite nicely. Geek Love is another nice production with tight bass and drum track, nice steel guitar highlights and interesting lyrics about an affair with a geek!

Mr King sounds for all the World like a SuzanneVega song – both lyrically and vocally – which is never a bad thing.

Next follows perhaps the most commercial track Everybody's Gone to War, with upbeat tempo and repeating muted guitar line, which shall be the first single released under 14th Floor, and will be it's second outing as a single. A product of the times that we are living in at the moment where, War in general has become the subject of many songs, and like most of them, this is of the “when is there ever a good cause to die for?” variety. Next track Learning to Breathe continues the momentum created, but opens with the first beat of the song being truncated – both on my HiFi CD player and via the PC (presumably this will be addressed before release). The penultimate track All Good People provides a combination of a mellow verses punctuated with a rousing chorus, with All Good People bringing a retro vibe to proceedings.

The production and sound quality on this album really is testament to the work of Howard Willing (Smashing Pumpkins), Wendy Melvoin (Prince and the Revolution) and Eric Rosse (Tori Amos).

Born to a half-French father, Indian-born mother, this UK-based beautiful talent should be onto a sure-fire winner with this album.

Daniel O'Connell

Gigs

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