Eleri Angharad is from Swansea, Wales, and her latest EP, A Merry Eleri Christmas, will be released on the 3rd December.
The EP consists of four tracks. 2 of which are original songs by Angharad and two are covers. The EP starts with what should surely be a sure-fire Christmas anthem, "Homemade Christmas". The music is quite slow, but lyrical and tuneful, the melodic flow and harmonic progression lush and easy, and it's a pop song in country music style. Quite beautiful.
Song number two on the album changes tempo to a faster country beat; a sophisticated jazz styled country, and is a cover of Justin Bieber's 'Mistletoe'. Whilst the third song goes back to Angharad's original compositions, 'Santa's Little Helper'. A jazzy, blues number.
The album finishes with a cover of the popular Christmas song, 'Santa Baby'. Here stripped back to just vocals and solo guitar. Her interpretation of the song gaining more meaning as we are forced to listen more to her singing without all the usual orchestral trappings.
Eleri Angharad has a breathy baby-doll voice which works better on some of the songs than others; but her voice is clear and the lyrics always intelligible. She sounds like a sophisticated lounge singer in these recordings, and perhaps that was the sound she was aiming for, who knows. The music she has chosen here is lovely. I was worried they might have been out of my comfort zone - I don't review / cover "pop" music as it is simply not my thing at all, and generally leave those reviews to others on my team; however I thought I'd try this one for myself, and was very glad I did. The four songs have a Musical Theatre feel to them. All have memorable melodies, musical and vocal refrains, and all tell a story. At one time, years ago perhaps, these songs would have been labelled "easy listening", and that's exactly what they are. An enjoyable listen.
"Just because it's Christmas / it's the most beautiful time of the year".
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
No comments:
Post a Comment