Malaya Blue: Bourbon Street

Bourbon Street
Malaya Blue

This concluding part of this week's trilogy of reviews features Malaya Blue, another artist new to me.

Starting off as choir girl singing Gospel songs and moving on through years as a session vocalist, Malaya is all set to break out in her own right with her debut album all set for release on 16 June.

Track List

Bourbon Street
Forgiveness
Better Moon
Lost Girl
Lady Sings The Blues (Night Owl Mix)
Ivory Tower
Bluesville UK
Dawn
Guilty
I've Cried A Little
Cold Hearted Man
How Did You Do This
Cold Light of Day
Promised Land

The genre is jazz blues rather than the recently much more popular blues rock, but there are ample doses of soul and pop along the way. In fact, the melancholy nature of most songs leads to the overriding impression of Malaya Blue inhabiting the role of torch singer, in the good old style.

Malaya's voice is so accomplished it's hard to believe this is her debut solo album. Bourbon Street is a good, solid start to her solo career and it will be interesting to see how her music develops.

The presence of both Andy Littlewood and Mick Simpson - whose album was reviewed on Tuesday - is felt throughout the album, with Andy demonstrating his songwriting and multi-instrumentalist talents and Mick providing very effective lead guitar on six tracks.

Stand out tracks:  Bitter Moon, Bluesville UK, Cold Hearted Man.

Here's a short promo film for the album.

For further information, head for this website.