Laura Mvula’s Sing To The Moon gets off to a great start with ‘Like The Morning Dew’, a song that grabs you straight away. This first track sets the tone for the rest of the record, with its dense harmonies, chilled-out jazz groove and syncopated beats scattered throughout.
This, her debut album, goes beyond Mvula just having potential and shows an artist with clear direction and purpose in the way that she makes her music. Mvula juggles a whole lot of different sounds simultaneously, somehow making them work with such fluidity that they seem made for each other. Her voice is sometimes a little Amy Winehouse, others old-school gospel, with some 40s jazz-style keeping it moving along throughout the record.
The album has a great balance of big numbers and quieter ballads, so if you’re not into the busy sound of her snappier tracks, the slower numbers on this album might grab you, for example ‘Can’t Live With The World’ and ‘Diamonds’. Also, while Mvula favours a broad range of accompaniment in some of her faster songs with plenty of harmonies and instrumentation, she proves that her voice doesn’t need any embellishment and can stand on its own in these slower tracks, particularly the sparsely beautiful ‘Something Out Of The Blue.’
It’s hard to play favourites with the different tracks on this record, because they’re all pretty outstanding, but ‘Is There Anybody Out There?’ and the title-track ‘Sing To The Moon’ stood out for me, as well as her current single ‘Green Garden.’ It’s hard to believe that this is her first album just based on it being so fantastic. Definitely the best debut album I’ve heard from anyone in a while, as well as a new favourite for my CD collection.
RCA
9/10
Reviewer: Louisa Bulley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qWuKSGii8o