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Rating: Almost three years after her debut, Anna Calvi invites us back to the stage of her personal theater and informs us that something has changed.
Everything, or almost everything, seems to have frozen. The fire, which once blazed uncontrollably among the tracks of her debut, is like trapped under a sheet of ice, which our new Joan of Arc treads upon barefoot. Upon closer inspection (or rather listening), that fire isn't extinguished; only metabolized and released in more contained doses.
It starts in the sign of tradition and for a moment it seems as if we can glimpse the silhouette of the flamenco dancer, who had so enchanted the audience: "Suddenly" and "Eliza" don't stray too far from what had been heard before. The latter especially seems to resurrect the body of Scott Walker; that of the Jacques Brel reinterpretations, with a finale worthy of applause. But from the third track onward, everything changes: "Piece By Piece" remains suspended somewhere between St Vincent, noise, and Kraftwerk; in the middle, Calvi's voice, never so sweet and sensual. Following, "Cry": ours in the guise of a mantis pretending to be a delicate flower, only to explode into a roar of electricity.
"Sing To Me" is the apex of the album, a song that slowly ascends from the outskirts of the heart, then rises supported by strings in a marvelous Morricone-like breath.
Also notable is the title track, almost divided in two: a contained and measured sigh that suddenly stops to make way for a chamber crescendo.
In the finale, after the fury of "Love Of My Life" (memories from the distant past Cheap Hotel) and the consummated embrace as the catharsis of "Bleed Into Me", we reach the evaporation of feelings in "The Bridge", a song of spirits and final atonement.
A second album certainly different, courageous, less "epidermic" than the first; but with the necessary attention and time, it delivers pathos and emotions, in even greater doses. "Sing to us beautiful one".
Tracklist and Videos
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