Alison Moyet - Review

This is music to watch doomed lovers jump off cliffs by.

There are very few singers who would dare to call an album Voice. Frank Sinatra did, Barbra Streisand nearly did and Ella Fitzgerald could have. You’re certainly not going to get a Kylie album with that title!

So it’s a bold move from Alison Moyet to title her sixth solo album, Voice. It’s an elegant album of classic and classical songs – melodic compositions that place the vocal as the centrepiece of the song. She delivers a pitch-perfect performance: confident and distinctive, emotive and intimate, it is no wonder that Moyet is rightfully praised as one of the leading female vocalists of her generation.

From the shivering glissando opening of ‘Windmills of your Mind’, you realise this is no easy-option covers album. Although an enduring standard packed with drama, Moyet’s steady-building rendition achieves the near impossible: you don’t think of other versions.

Afloat on Anne Dudley’s lush and romantic strings, ‘The Man I Love’ conjures up a dreamy reverie of passionate hopefulness, only to be shattered by the poignancy of the Elvis Costello ballad, ‘Almost Blue’. “I have seen such an unhappy couple / Almost you / Almost me” warns Moyet. Never comfortable with happy endings, the tone of Voice moves between wistful melancholy, autumnal longing, even funereal lamentation. This is music to watch doomed lovers jump off cliffs by.

And yet Moyet’s vocals draw you in. In what could be a mishmash of source material, Moyet’s carefully modulated singing and Anne Dudley’s baroque and romantic arrangements fuse extremes like Brel and Gershwin into a convincingly cohesive album.

The surprise selections come from opera: ‘Je Crois Entendre Encore’ is a dark incantation of lost love from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers beautifully underpinned by a tribal marimba percussion; ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’ is the haunting lament from Purcell’s tragic queen. It may be a long way from Yazoo’s ‘Only You’ but Moyet conveys the sustained intensity of these tracks to a wider audience.

Fans of “the big voice” need not fret. Although much of Voice enjoys Alison’s quieter, controlled range, Jacques Brel’s ‘La Chanson des Vieux Amants’, a tale of an enduring but tempestuous relationship, brims with French passion. But it is with ‘God Give Me Strength’ that the album finds its emotional core. Ranging from the raw pain of the personal to the full-throated blast of a lover spurned, Moyet gives the best vocal performance of a twenty-two year career.

It is an assured album but it does go badly wrong - just once - with the traditional folk song, ‘The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies O’ where Moyet serves up a big slice of hey nonny nonsense O. Despite an energetic instrumentation, this track simply does not fit. Move away from the Maypole, Ms Moyet!

A final jazz-tinged flourish with a familiar song from Moyet’s repertoire, ‘Cry Me A River’, and a touching ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ round off a fine album. There are no backing vocals throughout, giving Voice the feeling of a sublime concert performance.

There are bravely no concessions to popular taste or commercial appeal. But if you fancy some outstanding songs performed by a great female singer, this is a Voice that must be heard.

Voice, by Alison Moyet
Label: Sanctuary
ASIN: B0002MH5X6
Catalogue Number: SANCD270

Review originally published 6 September 2004

I rather like Voice to this day - it helped placing Alison's amazing gift right back to the forefront of her recordings, rather than being the primus instrument inter pares. In retrospect, I wish some of the arrangements had been as 'out there' as the song choices - it became an Alison album to respect than to clutch to your heart.

'Wraggle' remains a bit of a bete noir for me - I think it must be the English folky cadences that sit awkwardly in my Celtic ears. That said, I enjoy the defiant feistiness with which Alison imbues her live rendition.

What shows the richness of Moyet's work is that her majestic rendition of 'Alfie' didn't even make it onto the original CD release. Here it is for you to enjoy