Album No. 8

Britain's Katie Melua returns to her intimate pop sound with 2020's artfully textured Album No. 8. The album is Melua's first proper studio follow-up to 2013s Ketevan and arrives four years after her majestic holiday collaboration with the Gori Women's Choir, In Winter. While a return to her original alternative pop style, Album No. 8 is nonetheless a creative departure from her past work. Produced by Leo Abrahams, it finds Melua in a deeply introspective mood, crafting lightly experimental songs that evince the influence of '70s Krautrock and more-contemporary indie rock influences. Most noticeable in this tonal shift is a change in Melua's vocals. Known for her warm, brightly resonant vocal style, here she eschews her delicate vibrato for a softer, more diffuse-sounding head voice. While the album was recorded in the wake of the end of her six-year marriage, calling Album No. 8 a breakup record feels reductive. Certainly, Melua explicitly addresses the breakup on the Brian Eno-esque "Remind Me to Forget," singing, "You're so good at hiding/But I always seem to be reminded/Love is change." Although similarly melancholy notions arrive elsewhere, as on the dusky "A Love Like That" and the yearning, post-punk-influenced "Joy," the overall sentiment is one of deep self-reflection and judgment-free musical experimentation. Fuzzy synths, skittering electronic beats, and ghostly guitars pop up throughout the album. She delves into early '80s electro-pop on "English Manner" and sinks into sweetly sad-eyed Regina Spektor balladry on "Heading Home," singing of her adolescence, "I wish I could go back and tell my younger self none of this matters, even though it hurts like hell." Album No. 8 is an intensely personal album that feels like Melua made it for herself first and foremost. ~ Matt Collar