Album Review: Laura Mvula - Sing To The Moon

The clouds part, a ray of light appears and a heavenly choir descends from the skies to wrap you up in harmonies... So begins Like The Morning Dew, Laura Mvula's promising first track from debut album, Sing To The Moon. The next track, Make Me Lovely, winds itself around leaping vocal melodies and a dynamic, shifting song structure. Mvula's attitude is in turn feisty and vulnerable (“I can't make you love me/You can't make me lovely/Please don't try to hold me down… Don't want the world and lose my soul”). Single, Green Garden, is all shimmering tuned percussion, handclaps and processed vocal harmonies. It is on here and on later single, That's Alright, that the hype surrounding the British classically-trained receptionist-turned-superstar seems fitting. Comparisons to Florence & The Machine and Emeli Sande are also fitting, although as the album progresses it's clear Mvula's style is drier and stranger. The results are mixed. 

The middle tracks are delicately and intricately orchestrated but plod compared to the power of the opening sequence and That's Alright. Mashed somewhere between soul and Sufjan Stevens-style baroque-pop, the slower songs feel crowded with ideas but undeveloped as actual songs. The idiosyncratic approach gets close on the later tracks (Flying Without You) but most suffer from a lack of forward motion (Sing To The Moon). Instead of soulful gravitas, the space seems unmeasured and it's a little wearing waiting for the song to unfold. 

There are some misses and her ambition doesn't quite bring together her competing styles. However, there are genuinely beautiful moments on the album and Mvula is clearly one to watch.