Birdy
Beautiful Lies

The third album is a challenge for everyone: a hurdle to overcome, the last obstacle whose surpassing allows an emerging artist to enjoy the status of an established artist, but also the one that, if not faced with due preparation, can condemn to a more than probable downward slope both in artistic terms and audience feedback. Quite a responsibility, then... imagine when you're not even twenty. Because yes, Birdy has reached this point in her career at an age when many of her colleagues or aspiring ones have yet to step on a major stage for the first time and start working in serious discography.

But it's not so much the age factor that's surprising (Jasmine van den Bogaerde is certainly not the first to have already released a couple of records at such a young age), but rather the way the fateful test has been passed: if "Fire Within" was pleasant, yet still too immature, "Beautiful Lies" marks more than decent advances not only in compositional and interpretative terms but also, and above all, sound-wise. In fact, if the previous album appeared excessively dispersed at the sound level, Birdy's latest effort sounds much more cohesive and organic, and her writing, simple but direct and not trivial, can now benefit from a renewed soundscape, which is also anything but easy or trendy. If we exclude the two launching singles "Keeping Your Head Up" and "Wild Horses", too similar to Florence + The Machine, without a vocal presence as imposing as Welch's, "Beautiful Lies"'s tracklist wisely ranges between delicate piano-voice ballads, like "Lost It All" and the splendid title track, and songs like "Growing Pains" and "Shadow", with oriental-like percussion and atmospheres. Not surprisingly, most of the album was written in a flash of inspiration sparked by reading "Memoirs of a Geisha", and it shows, with Birdy's delicate yet in its own way important voice, which, besides showing exponential growth technically, fits perfectly into sonic embroidery that, amidst dreamy atmospheres and oriental flavors, cannot help but occasionally remind us of the Kate Bush of "The Kick Inside" and the colors of "Fur and Gold" by the younger Bat for Lashes.

Now, there are less successful pieces than others (and which moreover have been included in the standard edition of the album to the detriment of much more deserving tracks from the deluxe version), and in the end, the album is far from having the status of a masterpiece as the aforementioned "The Kick Inside" might have, but in an incredibly flat pop context like the current one, "Beautiful Lies" stands out for being honest and sounding out of time and trends, molded according to the will of its author, who evidently looks much further than the charts and radio plays, despite her young age. So well done Birdy, see you at the next album!