Not only does her rendition add new weight to an oft overlooked Radiohead cut but it manages to sound more like a La Havas original than anything else. Grow The singer-songwriter performed the Punisher track 'I Know... Against Me! Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. By ‘Seven Times’ she’s set herself free, and even if she spends all day crying and praying there is an optimistic heart in the music that suggests she will find that strength somewhere. Soulful, angelic vocals that normally possess a Lianne La Havas album but this album tells a strong story which never was there in her other albums. But La Havas’ interests go farther than just neo-soul, whether it be on the Destiny’s Child-esque harmonies on “Read My Mind” or on the unmistakable Hejira-era (1976) guitar and bass combo of Joni Mitchell and Jaco Pastorius guiding “Green Papaya”. However, as accomplished as the record is in its cohesiveness, I sense that La Havas has yet to fully match her songwriting skills with the value and sheer beauty of her vocals. At its core, “Weird Fishes” is about depression, despair, and the seduction of escape. After taking a longer than planned break Lianne La Havas returns with a self titled record that quietly reasserts her musical identity. On “Bittersweet,” she lifts a guitar line from Isaac Hayes’ 1971 medley “Ike’s Rap Part III/Your Love Is So Doggone Good” and braids it with hummed vocal melodies: “Now my sun’s going down,” she muses, rounding out the last word with knowing acceptance, “telling me something isn’t right.” La Havas sounds stronger for the doubt, trusting her inner voice to see her through. “Knowing my head from my tail isn’t easy for me,” she admits on “Please Don’t Make Me Cry,” an ambling highlight that features Nick Hakim playing the record’s only electric guitar. back in 2012 and that year it was nominated for a Mercury Prize and even something called the “iTunes Album of the Year” award. Nevertheless, Blood is an enjoyable listen and will no doubt be given further listens, at least in part, in the future. La Havas has long been overlooked by the music press, with each album receiving adequate praise but … La Havas makes music making seem easy, but the amount of intelligence in this album is a wonderful testament to how talented she is. The album opens with “Bittersweet”, a succinct road map to the song cycle, focusing on all three parts of the relationship arc and featuring a prominent Isaac Hayes sample.
However, her trajectory hitherto inspires optimism.
A slow-burning would-be anthem, it comes at the tail end of the break-up section, where La Havas essentially comes into her own and at the same time can’t quite let go. She also took a break from smoking and drinking around the time she started recording, resulting in a clarity to the grain of her voice that shades her admissions with intense candor. For all the merits of Lianne La Havas’s thoroughly lovely and dynamic voice, the album ultimately comes across as lopsided and a little flat. The songs illuminate passion, impulsiveness, ambivalence and uncertainty, yet the structures La Havas created are lucid and poised.
Favourite tracks // What You Don’t Do Lianne La Havas showed growth and nothing more than a bless for this terrible year that we are going through... (Fav tracks: Paper Things, Bittersweet, Weird Fishes and Sour Flower). Or, for TV talent-show alumni, prompt the memory of supermarket shoppers just enough to take it from shelf to trolley. La Havas’s version of the In Rainbows track is slower and earthier than Radiohead’s more cerebral original, yet it retains all of its fragility. However, as accomplished as the record is in its cohesiveness, I sense that La Havas has yet to fully match her songwriting skills with the value and sheer beauty of her vocals. Love comes at a cost, she sings on Please Don’t Make Me Cry. And what can we tell about the Radiohead's cover to Weird Fishes? But the song’s outro manifests La Havas’ sense of overcoming, commingling double bass, piano, and guitar into an exuberant jam session. Sophomore Blood was accused of harbouring little more than its standout singles, but Lianne La Havas reveals a wellspring of latent wonders. "@type": "Organization", A break-up record at heart, it’s inspired by the lifecycle of plants, and follows a failed relationship through love at first sight, its demise, and independence thereafter. With a discernible change in instrumentation and post-production, it is clear that the album had intentions of being bigger and bolder, with a full band accompanying La Havas throughout the album where previously vocals and guitar were much more common. Paring her sound back to little more than her skillful guitar-playing and deep, husky voice, the London songwriter explores the aftermath of a breakup with confidence and repose. After the release of Blood, La Havas went into seclusion, writing and recording songs for what become her third album. On “Paper Thin”, the opening lyrics and melody allegedly came to La Havas in a dream. During her self-imposed hiatus, La Havas’ romantic relationship began to deteriorate. Driven by persiflage, the often mousy La Havas is now seen embodying the chutzpah of Blu Cantrell or TLC. Combining orchestral gravitas with hushed intimacy, Lianne La Havas and Jules Buckley make magic at the Barbican – Lianne La Havas knows how to tantalise an audience. The third full-length release for the British singer-songwriter was produced with Matt Hales, Beni Giles, and Mura Masa. Now, with complete artistic control and a hefty conceptual eye, La Havas has crafted her best album to date. In her recent attempt at “ Weird Fishes,” Lianne La Havas not only nails the ethereality of the song; she transforms it into her own soulful masterpiece.
The introspective, almost whispered vocals reflect her inner turmoil. Whereas “Bittersweet” encompassed the album’s lyrical themes and grandeur in one (relatively) concise track, the more memorable and assertive song is “Please Don’t Make Me Cry”. La Havas in not yet a strong enough songwriter to get away with that kind of neglect. La Havas’ most profound moment appears on “Paper Thin,” the album’s crushing centerpiece. To acknowledge this song as a cover almost cheapens the impact and importance it holds to this album. ( Log Out / Ike’s Rap Part III/Your Love Is So Doggone Good. La Havas skips nimbly between wordy lines like “Feels like I’ve got nothing to hide/ a serendipity/ I noticed you noticed me”. The album takes La Havas’ struggles and losses and turns them into a display of the most true version of herself and her artistic vision. She eventually found inspiration in the cyclical nature of both love and the seasons.
His loss is among several that La Havas endured while writing the album, something she nods to obliquely with the closing “Sour Flower,” named for a phrase her late great-grandmother used to describe a personal hardship. Eventually, she chose to build an entire album around the atmosphere and energy from that one-off track and the rest of the jigsaw fell into place. A cover of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” appears at the climax of Lianne La Havas as a fretful turning point in the album’s central relationship. While matters of the heart may be out of control, her fingers and voice are impeccable. Lianne La Havas, the London singer/songwriter’s third album, sees her join this coterie. Musically it’s another slow burn stunner, just gorgeous in its vulnerability. "author": { Lianne La Havas’ storytelling supersedes both her previous work and much of her contemporaries. I would love to hear this kind of material with a less sterile accompanying sound, but for the time being I’ll have to settle for being a bit disappointed. Midnight. The rest of the album can feel just as serendipitous. It’s a simple optimistic love song lyrically, but the layers of music and vocals add something a little different. La Havas has long been overlooked by the music press, with each album receiving adequate praise but with most publications avoiding any long lasting support. "@type": "Person", Split into roughly three sections, the album traces a relationship from the initial thrill of a new courtship, to its dissolution and eventually to renewed individuality. 's Laura Jane Grace has surprise released a new solo album called Stay Alive.
"bestRating": "5", Lianne La Havas is her most fully formed and confident album, one that for the first time brings each of her genre influxes together into something greater. It’s about glimmers of hope in the darkest moments. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Our Culture Mag. "datePublished": "2020-07-29T12:25:00+10:00", The next move is anyone’s guess. based on "publisher": { Her indie rock influences are given a nod with her cover of Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes’. There's a wobbly quality to La Havas's toplines that means they can get lost in the more densely instrumented tracks, yet the sparser finger-picked guitar numbers give her songwriting space to shine. Soulful, angelic vocals that normally possess a Lianne La Havas album but this album tells a strong story which never was there in her other albums.
In the liner notes Lianne describes this as ‘the album I’ve always wanted to make’ while also thanking fans for their patience and support after she ‘lost hope’. Throughout the album, each supplementary instrument—a spare flute here, a cello and viola there—lends the music texture and depth.
Universal acclaim “It’s your life, but you’re not the only one who’s suffering,” she sings, laying out in generous terms why the relationship no longer serves her. [Aug 2020, p.84]. Lianne La Havas, for the most part, has flown under the radar. Her voice is never less than sublime and you feel she has a renewed confidence in her musical style while also allowing for further experimentation. “I know you’re made of better stuff.” Her voice sounds on the verge of tears, tremulous and rich with vibrato. The lyrics are matched by the music: sophisticated, stylish, and intimate. Favourite tracks // Wonderful
However, it’s ‘Weird Fishes’, a cover from Radiohead’s 2007 LP In Rainbows, that’s Lianne La Havas’ highlight. { "itemReviewed": {