CityLife

EXCLUSIVE album preview: Kirsty Almeida - Pure Blue Green

Kirsty Almeida

CityLife has been given exclusive early access to Kirsty Almeida's much-anticipated debut album.

To listen, click the music player on the right.

ALBUM REVIEW
by Paul Taylor

Kirsty Almeida - Pure Blue Green
(Decca)
Official release: August 30

I’m a collector of ‘tingle factor’ moments – those utterly great bits of songs which make you smile or sigh every time you hear them. And there’s the mother of all tingle factors on Kirsty Almeida’s stunning debut album, when at the end of Scares Me, she holds a note for 15 seconds as a brass arrangement bold enough for a Bond theme thunders beneath her. That she goes from this, worthy of Shirley Bassey’s titanic tonsils, to a song, Butterflies, which is gentle enough for Corinne Bailey Rae’s more contemplative moods, is evidence in itself of the gobsmacking range of a new artist we can claim as one of our own. An adopted Manc, Almeida worked with Latin band La Gran Descarga for three years before writing her own album. That writing is extraordinarily sophisticated, drawing on latin and jazzy influences, but also folk and blues, to create something classy but timeless.  Brass, harp and strings abound. If You Can’t Make Me Happy, for instance, is like a little three-act drama going from bouncy acoustic pop to cooing balladry and back again. Spider shows Almeida’s soulful chops, building from a spindly electric piano riff into an anthemic brass-laden churn. The variety of musical moods, the understated intelligence of the writing and the pure joy of the execution make this, surely, one of 2010 exceptional debuts.

Rating: 4/5

TRACK LISTING:

1. Gather Round 
2. If You Can’t Make Me Happy 
3. Spider 
4. Cool Down Rewind 
5. Late At Night 
6. Scares Me 
7. Butterflies 
8. Shine All Your Light 
9. Couldn’t You Just 
10. Sweet Old Love 
11. Wish You Well 
12. Willow 
13. If You Can’t Make Me Happy (slow version)