Piece By Piece [CD]

Piece By Piece--the second album from Georgia-born chanteuse cum naturalised Brit, Katie Melua, and the successor to her multi-million selling Call Off The Search--begins teasingly with the soft-peddled "come hither" jazz flirtations of "Shy Boy" and concludes with the whispering philosophical torch song resignation of "I Do Believe In Love". The two songs represent opposite ends of the emotional spectrum--sultry and kittenish on the one hand, solitary and ruminative on the other--but they also offer clues that the cutesy, crazy, easy listening Melua of Mike Batt's mentorship may be gradually acceding to the full bloom of self-determined musical adulthood. Melua's songs are often the more fretful and organic, the ghostly title track and the lovely "I Cried for You" are especially recommended, while the bluesier numbers (particularly the cover of the classic "Blues In The Night") seem shoehorned-in gratuitously to match an anticipated demographic. Batt's contributions are melodic, memorably buoyant and childlike, the Chinese-flavoured "Nine Million Bicycles" and the naggingly catchy "Halfway Up The Hindu Kush" are both charming despite their naive, pseudo-ethnicity and currently offer, particularly when compared to something as ponderously wooly as "Spider's Web", a necessary fun counterbalance to Melua's burgeoning compositional skills.

At this stage, Piece By Piece fits together nicely like a little jigsaw puzzle. And even if it didn't, Melua would still sound simply ambrosial singing from a washing machine repair manual. --Kevin Maidment

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After the huge success of Call Off The Search, it would be unfair to expect Katie Melua to stray too much from that winning formula for album number two. And guess what? She hasn't. The thirteen songs here flirt with blues, jazz and classic MOR, there's even a spot of exotica. So far, so good, but the trouble is that much of the original material here is so weak that it collapses under the strain of Mike Batt's highly calorific string arrangements.

Not only that, the choice of covers is almost surreal; Canned Heat's "On The Road Again" and The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" are miraculously transformed into bloodless dirges, while it really should be illegal for anyone to even think about covering "Blues In The Night". Katie's momma should have done told her to leave that one alone; her voice just isn't strong enough to handle that kind of material. Norah's got nothing to worry about on the strength of this showing... --Trevor Lord

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Katie Melua’s long awaited second album, Piece By Piece, is released nearly two years after the debut of her multi-platinum selling album, Call Off The Search. Piece By Piece demonstrates Katie’s significant growth as an artist, containing a larger percentage of self-penned songs than her first album.