Beloved One - album review

Lou Rhodes

After a decade as one half of the electronic duo Lamb, Lou Rhodes has released her first solo album. No samples, beats or electronica here, just eleven acoustic songs about love and life. Anyone familiar with Lamb will be aware of her emotive heartfelt vocals, here they are given centre stage against a backdrop of ethnic instruments, guitar, strings and hand drum percussion.

Rhodes writes tenderly of love, of its fragility, its tenderness and its cruelty. She is the observer and the victim, correspondingly her vocal fills the frame, she's a force of nature whispering in your ear. Having experienced the break up with her partner she moved to a commune in Surrey with her two children, re-evaluated her life and reaquainted herself with the things in this world that really matter.

The album has an earthy elemental feel to it, but it avoids pastoral or folky contrivance in any sense. It's also very feminine, it embodies the female strength that can withstand challenges and obstacles and stoically overcome them, but at the same time remaining vulnerable. On first listen it feels quite sparse as her voice is so arresting, listen further and the superb production values become evident, a wealth of layered instruments appear out of the mix as subtle punctuation, emphasising the organic stream of images conjured by the lyrics and Rhodes intonation.

Rhodes hypnotic and dreamy vocals were a hallmark of Lamb, on this recording they have an added sense of world-wise melancholia. The consequense of this is an earthy sensuality evoked most strongly on the title track and final one Why, each have her voice whispering dreamily one moment and then building to an emotional pitch that demands you play this album as loudly as you dare.

Recorded on her own label Infinite Bloom, this has set the bar extremely high. She hopes it will become a home for like minded artists, if this is anything to go by there should be a lot to look forward to.

Iain Hazlewood