Albums

Album Review: Pauline Taylor

Album: Up
Label: Absolute

As a backing singer, Pauline featured on some of the biggest anthems of the 90’s and quickly became linked with dance band Faithless and all the side projects that subsequently formed. When Pauline too started recording her own material it was Faithless members, Rollo Armstrong and Sister Bliss, who remixed it. Ten years on and the hedonism of dance music has been replaced by sensitive, summer soul.

On ‘Up’, Pauline comes across as part-Macy Gray, part-Des’ree. Her soothing vocal has a distinctively warm-sounding quality and fits perfectly with the rolling richness of the music. First track, ‘Drama Queen’ has gentle acoustic guitar, trumpet and tambourine and tales of useless lovers – it’s a beautiful introduction to what follows. Other outstanding tracks are the title-track which features jazz-blues piano and scratching guitar beneath lyrics that tell of sleepless nights, ‘Deeper’ with it’s rolling rhythm and uplifting backing vocals, and ‘Hackney Crystals’ which has disarming lyrics which speak of city life and the various characters within.

At times this album surprises as it takes on unexpected affectations of country music, 50’s swing and even Bollywood. If you’re feeling a little down in the mouth you could do a lot worse than let the soothing songs of Pauline Taylor lift you back up.

For fans of: Des’ree, Paolo Nutini, Dido
Band link = Pauline Taylor

Buy this CD!

This review originally appeared in Music-Zine.

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