There is, undeniably, a ripe contemporary market flush with youngsters peddling variations on easy listening, swing and even opera. However, Voice--Alison Moyets new covers album of jazz, lounge and romantic opera spanning Bacharach to LeGrand, Jacques Brel to Henry Purcell--stands apart from all that with a detached air of solemn academic nous. Working with a small classical orchestra (arrangements courtesy of film score Oscar winner and former Art Of Noise honcho Anne … mehrDudley) Moyet performs some time-honoured standards ( a sleepy Gershwins The Man I Love, a distinctly unjolly Bye Bye Blackbird) with distinction but, rather sensibly, eschews animative Rat Pack brio in favour of crestfallen introspection. Any album, therefore, where the happiest song is Cry Me A River and where the liveliest song is a traditional folk ballad addressing ethnic cleansing in 17th Century Scotland can hardly be expected to put smiles on the faces of young children. Voice is probably easier to admire than to love. However, for Moyet, this has been a callisthenic exercise in self-improvement and theres no denying that her version of Almost Blue betters the recent efforts of Mrs Costello or that her solid performances of Bizet and Purcell warrant favourable comparisons to Bowies dalliances with the works of Brecht and Weill. --Kevin Maidment weniger
1 - Windmills of your mind
2 - The man I love
3 - Almost blue
4 - Je crois entendre encore
5 - What are you doing the rest of your life ?… mehr
6 - God give me strength
7 - The wraggle taggle gypsies-o!
8 - Dido's lament : when I am laid in earth
9 - La chanson des vieux amants
10 - Cry me a river
11 - Bye bye blackbird weniger