Mara Carlyle
The Lovely

"One, None and One Hundred Thousand Maras"

Beautiful, smoky, and sultry, this "timeless" album by this Mara, an extremely talented singer who ranges from jazz to electronic music but always with a "classic" touch in her performances. Everything revolves around her magnificent voice (perhaps a bit too prominent, if I may offer a "productive" comment) which at times becomes ethereal ("Saw Song", the first track with a vaguely Bjork-like quality) and at other times Billy Holliday (the second classic track with an old-fashioned flavor "I Blame You Not"). With the third track, we enter Portishead territory ("Alive" and the subsequent "It's Time" with heart-wrenching falsettos of unreachable melancholy) and so on, in a sequence of references to different styles and performers. With track 6 /"Lost To Sea") we reach electropop reminiscent of Everything But The Girl or Saint Etienne, featuring the a cappella track "June 15" which is classic soul of the finest kind. With "Bravely", the voice seems like that of Dolly Parton, and the song in pure Country-Soul seems directly pulled from a 1950s record, much like "Baby Blodheart" harks back to the early Bjork when she sang jazz or to the best Joni Mitchell (perhaps more crystalline and less husky than the latter). And after this exhausting tour de force through genres, a kind of express catalog of the best sounds of recent years, the album closes with "For Me", a track that alludes to and recalls the early Morcheeba, between trip-hop and afro/caribbean rhythms.

Well, if she wanted to amaze us and give us a taste of her capabilities, we must admit that the goal was achieved. However, we are left with a doubt: but Mara Carlyle, the woman herself rather than the professional, if she could, if she had "one chance," what voice would she have? What style would she adopt? In short, why give us a demonstration of her (noteworthy) technical prowess without making us understand WHO and WHAT she really wants to express? Is it truly the result of herself, or should it be considered just an excellent exercise? In short, it reminds us of the journey of our National Giorgia: a lot of technique and little soul, especially at the beginning... who knows, perhaps the answer will come in the next album. Which I will purchase sight unseen.