mara carlyle: floreat

It took an IKEA full of cats to help bring this long-delayed second album from Shropshire-born Mara Carlyle to light. Her track ‘Pianni’, from 2004’s The Lovely, was deployed on an advert for the Swedish furniture giant at a point when the singer / composer / arranger was ready to give up making music all together, having been caught up in the fallout from Guy Hands’ ill-fated takeover of EMI. Originally scheduled for release at the end of 2008, the album has finally emerged on Carlyle’s own Ancient & Modern imprint, bearing the new name of Floreat, which appropriately translates from Latin as ‘let it flourish’ or ‘let her bloom’.

And bloom she does! The spare and sometimes brittle electronics of the laptop-produced The Lovely are replaced by lush orchestration that swoops and soothes as Carlyle cartwheels through musical styles both real and imagined. The giddy ecstasy of her voice bursts forth from a deceptive intro of stately violas as first single ‘Weird Girl’ turns into a jaunty Cajun jig; ‘Bowlface En Provence’ sways like a slow, delicate calypso, building to a expression of desperate joy; while the flirtatious pep talk of ‘Pearl’ invents the never-was genre of Elizabethan ska. “This boy must be blind if he can’t see you and your gorgeous behind,” teases Carlyle, sounding like a sweeter Lily Allen fronting a restrained Tudor version of inventive folk outfit Bellowhead.

The sound of cats purring on the intro to ‘How It Felt (To Kiss You)’ morphs into strings, then transitions again into a gorgeous orchestral instrumental, gentle yet broad in scope. Taking the form of a brief madrigal, ‘All Will Be Well’ hosts a heavenly flock of layered vocals that seek to reassure before dropping into to the tribal drums and plucked ukulele of ‘Away With These Self-Loving Lads’. Elsewhere, the dense sensuality of ‘Nuzzle’ sounds love-drunk, once again employing the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with the utmost care and attention to detail. Like much of Floreat, it drags you along in its dreamy tide of harmonies. A swoon, a sigh, a secret whispered in a lover’s ear; this is music designed to totally envelop the listener.

The intoxicatingly woozy jazz of album closer ‘The Devil & Me’ is a delicious series of refrains on the revelation of finding love right under your nose, wrapped around a piano riff that spirals and begs repeated plays. It exhorts the listener to rush out and find someone worthy of having so much affection lavished upon them. It’s the perfect conclusion to a seductive, graceful and persuasive album that’s never tempted to excessively labour its many ideas, overflowing as it does with inventive stylistic quirks that see no boundaries between musical genres. It’s a credit to Carlyle that she pulls this protean feat off with such élan, and credit to her for persevering to get Floreat released at last.

[Ancient & Modern/PIAS; July 25, 2011]

Written by: Lucy Brouwer

Tags: floreat, mara carlyle

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2011 at 12:59 pm and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.