Birdy - Fire Within vs Layla Zoe - The Lily

Fight!

I know this isn’t fair but life isn’t fair and there often isn’t any fairness in the acquisition of talent either, so comparing Birdy with Layla Zoe is a respective lightweight/heavyweight mismatch but it will serve to make a point.

When I reviewed Birdy’s eponymous debut I, like many others, was positive about this 15 years old's vocal talent and promise for the future. My review did acknowledge that I was at times impressed/engaged by her choice of material [e.g. a James Taylor], and that was quite a telling observation when I consider my feelings about her sophomore effort Fire Within. I’m really not going to waste much time. I’m disappointed, not that I really care that much, but I am. This is such a formulaic album with Birdy now adopting that affected staccato vocal that is such a fashion and such a musical death-knell in my aural opinion.

It doesn’t help that Birdy’s opening track Wings is a Coldplay-esque anthemic nothingness, the vocal affecting a pitch shift here and there to generate ‘interest’ in a song that plods along in its plodding anthemic beat going nowhere. Next Heart of Gold does put the vocal to the fore and it is strong as I praised two years ago, but those broken syllables [forced gaps between] are just dreadful. Not having any discernible melody doesn’t help. Last one: third Light Me Up accentuates the affectation, though it isn’t perhaps as bad as a first listen suggested – my prejudices kicking in strongly – and as I listen now I realise it really is again a lack of engaging melody: it is mainly repetitions of fairly uninteresting melodic lines as well as lyrics. 

Whereas Zoe’s opening unaccompanied vocal on Glory, Glory, Halleluiah is soulful and mature and, well, damn good! It’s a different vocal and style of course – essentially a blues vocal with a gutsy edge – and the songs are, I must admit, formulaic in being blues numbers, so there is also that element of musical preference in this judgement – but I have declared my love of the pretty and other so there is also this other judgement about talent and its application. Lily is a fine album, and third Green Eyed Lover exemplifies the raunchy, with fourth Gemini Heart offering a blues gospel ballad that pairs the full vocal with some neat electric lead. Two other slower gems are Father and title track The Lily: both sublime sensual singing.

Differences, choice, preference, judgement. Not sure if any of this matters. Maybe it is also about those who advised Birdy – assuming she took advice – to produce an album as anaemic as this one. Perhaps it will sell because it isn’t targeted at someone like me! Not convinced. 5 star reviews on Amazon – well 8 of them – and polite if not gushing reviews in the newspapers. Maybe I’m just not in a polite mood. Maybe I’m just enjoying funky raunchy allsyllablesandsentencessung Canadian female vocal excellence more.