There's a nostalgically soulful charm pulsating through the veins of Nashville singer-songwriter Natalie Prass's eponymous debut album that's not immediately obvious from her first teaser Bird of Prey.

 

What we learn initially from the track is that she has a sweet harmless morning voice that breezes over gleeful Rachel-Yamagata-piano arrangement backed by sophisticated production and delicate orchestration. We also get a sense that she has a mature and sensible personality but has a soft spot for being romantic, suggested by her rational and level-headed lyrics. The song deserves credit for it's arrangement and epic pacing but what was expected to follow was a well composed yet predictable and overly simplistic folk-inclined diary of love stories with a girl and her guitar.

 

It's a great surprise that it's a lot more fascinating than that. After studying at the Berklee College of music, she has gained a knowledgeable respectfullness for old styles of music along with a classy attitude that makes it easy to imagine her jamming in a boogie woogie style duet with Jools Holland on Radio 2 especially on tracks such as the second single Why Don't You Believe In Me. The music leans towards old soul but her voice has a folky flavour so much that she seems to have created her orchestral own folk-soul style blending inspirations from two different genres. 

 

Danish duo Quadron have been maestros at bringing back nostalgic soul and The Gladys Knight and The Pips tempo, shaking percussion and smooth brass create thelate 60s/early 70s soul and rhythm and blues vibe to the music on Your Fool that feels absent without female backing singers due to it's authenticity whilst Prass's vocals sway from Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Dusty Springfield to Minnie Riperton in any instance with the latter's influence heard at the end of her sentences emphasising the critical emotions.

 

Her lyrical content is still romantic like on the aforementioned Bird of Prey but this time it's feministic and regretful with Aretha Franklin stubborness as she confidently claims: "...you'll come back to an empty house with a note signed sincerely: your a fool." Your Fool is also reborn effectively on penultimate track Reprise where a spoken word (talking blues/sprechgesang) technique - that made Diana Ross special in her motown years- to add a personalized storytelling quality that is also associated with female soul singers. 

 

The blues piano format adopted many times most notably on Why Don't You Believe In me and Violently also adds to it's nostalgia and was also recently bought back in fashion by James Blake's Limit To Your Love.

 

There are some incredibly beautiful and captivating moments here too that continue to common resurgence of orchestral pop. Prass ultilized her orchestra to full capacity on stand out track Christy which paints a children's fantasy movie through heavenly harp playing, classical violins and in the darker moments, she moulds her voice into a higher pitched fragile and nervous pitch a kin to early Joanna Newsom. Whilst, the album ends with a happy finale, on the pretty It is You, which has the bittersweetness, fairytale hope and welcoming familarity of a classic Disney soundtrack, revitalizing her rainbow-coloured optimism in romance. It would also fit nicely on in the unpredictable oxymoron world of Anja Garbarek.

 

Fast-rising new independent label Spacebomb will surely boost their credibility with a classy and musically rich debut album that sounds both old and fresh. It's just unfortunate that at a quanity 9 tracks we don't get to hear more from her, just when we were starting to fall in love. MTH

 

Best Tracks: Bird of Prey, Christy and It is You