DiscographyDiscography
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Ancient Heart (1988 Reprise 25839-2)
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The Sweet Keeper (1990 Reprise 26091-2)
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Everybody's Angel (1991 Reprise 26486-2)
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Eleven Kinds Of Lonliness (1992 Reprise 26835-2)
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On the surface "Lovers in the City" does not seem very different or radical than Tanita's other four albums. However, like her previous work, upon careful scrutiny this effort is delightfully spiced with innovations and surprises.Typical delicious Tanita darkness nicely arranged throughout and delivered with the stunning tonal quality of Tanita's voice.
The very 1st cut "I Might Be Crying" is the best song I have heard this year. It has a wonderful calypso type rhythm with haunting chants and backing vocals by Jennifer Warnes. Jennifer does backing vocals on several other cuts and is superb. Tanita also uses the London Session Orchestra and The Valentini Strings on selected cuts.
The arrangement and execution of these resources is masterful as "Feeding the Witches" aptly demonstrates, featuring Tanita and the London Session Orchestra. We've heard Jewel yodel, now Tanita joins the yodeling craze. The "Yodelling Song" is worth the the whole price of the CD to hear Tanita do a duet yodel with Don Edwards, while Jim Keltner bangs the drums.
Every cut is crafted with caring precision,
thoughtful arrangements and fine selection of musicians and resources.
There is not a weak song in the bunch, and what a wonderful treat to
get ten gifts at once. This album is superb and highly
recommended.
---Jack Sutton
The definitive dark mood spinner, Tanita Tikaram succeeds where all the clones fail.
Blessed with a rich, smoky, resonating voice, Tikaram doesn't need all the production support to make the material work. She can sing with a mellow bongo beat and it's still hypnotic -- without being melodramatic.
Thanks to the pinpoint production skills of Tikaram herself and Thomas Newman, the instrumentation takes a back seat to the voice, which has the strength and subtlety normally associated with jazz artists.
The other asset that pushes her head and shoulders above the rest of the female vocalist horde is her melodic sensibility. Using her voice as a pointer, her songs rise and fall inside her with the melodic ease of a drunken chanteuse.
Smoky, dark and ethereal, Lovers in the City will hang in the air intangibly like a fine perfume -- classy, subtle and decidedly understated.
Tanita Tikaram sees herself in the tradition of singer-songwriter, like Nanci Griffith, Joan Armatrading and Mary Margaret O'Hara. Which is probably why the Average Joe rock fan (into Oasis, admires PJ Harvey), doesn't really see her as part of the normal scheme of things, sadly. Five albums down the line, and it's still little miss "Good Tradition" who lingers in most minds. After all, who remembers Tanita plugging singles from the three albums that followed four million-selling debut Ancient Heart on TOTP [Top of The Pops]? There you go.
But perhaps that's been good news for her 1995 return with Lovers in the City (Eastwest). Still no hits, but the long-player's cool sophistication and Tanita's fresh-faced maturity makes her ripe for reassessment by people who thought she'd been swept away with 1988. Lovers in the City is quality stuff. The mood is subtle, New Age introspective and calm throughout. Maybe that is down to co-producer Thomas Newman, film score man for Scent of a Woman and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. The catch is, the music is too smooth to rock the senses: all too often Tanita and band's poise and silk touch tranquillity shove the music into MOR territory. So nope, PJ Harvey fans won't buy it. Being a broody twentysomething story teller suits Tanita, but a few sonic experiments away from those folk rockers wouldn't do any harm. Let's see: a 1960s pop song cover perhaps, or a team up with Tricky of Massive Attack.
--- Angela Lewis
Lovers In The City (1995 Reprise 45883-2)
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The Best Of Tanita Tikaram "Sometimes we need the benefit of hindsight to truly appreciate the consistency and range of a
body of work, and it may be thus in relation to that of Tanita Tikaram.
Best Of Tanita
TikaramBecause she became
so successful so quickly - from Hampshire schoolgirl to top 10 chart star in what seemed like
five seconds flat - it was all too easy to think we had her pegged. After all, she was the
singer/somgwriter with the bookish lyrics and the dark blue, about-to-break-up voice, the one
who brought you songs like 'Twist In My Sobriety' into the relentlessly cheery world of 'Top
of the Pops' studio...
More than three million people bought her debut lp, 1988's Ancient Heart, some of whom thought that it told all there was to know about her and so stopped really listening. Their loss, as is proved conclusively by this first retrospective of what has been, to date, a five album career.
At the time of writing, Tanita is 26 years old and, happily, still very much alive and well and
active in music. But she has chosen to take a little time out at this point - time to work on her
songs away from the spotlight, at the same time as reclaiming something of the offstage life she
sacrificed during those first heady few years of round-the-world performing and promoting. It
is, then the perfect moment to look back and assess her achievements to date. Quite
considerable they are, too. This is a woman who went from being a tentative newcomer
playing the acoustic room of North London's Mean Fiddler, to being the owner of a recording
contract, to enjoying multi-platinum status here, there and almost everywhere else in little
more than a year. And having won that status, she used it bravely and well.
There is nothing safe, over-familiar or formulaic within the 17 tracks that make up 'The best of Tanita Tikaram'. This daughter of Fijian-Malaysian parents, brought up first on the British army bases of Germany and then in suburban Basingstoke, combines lyrical acuity, musical invention and a completely individual vocal style to always intriguing, sometimes stunning effect. With its inclusion drawn from all five of her releases - in addition to 'Ancient Heart', they are 'The Sweet Keeper' (1990), 'Everybody's Angel' (1991), 'Eleven Kinds of Loneliness' (1992), and 'Lovers In The City' (1995) - the compliation acts achieves three different roles. First and foremost, it provides testament to a maturity of musical vision rarely found in one relatively so young. Secondly, its largely chronological make-up allows the listener to witness the development of that vision over time. And, thirdly, it acts as the perfect introduction for those previously unfamiliar with any or all aspects of her work.
Throughout her time in the public eye, Tanita has been scrupulously generous in praising those
artists who have inspired or infulenced her, among them Nina Simone, Jennifer Warnes, Dinah
Washington and Mary Margaret O'Hara. On record, she is anything but a copyist though, as
these 17 songs demonstrate. Back in 1988, 'Good Tradition' sounded like nothing else on
the top 40 - and gloriously so. Seven years on, she was continuing to make wholly original if
very different music to that debut hit, as the gorgeous track to 'Lovers In The City'
demonstrates here. Not the first to grow up within the spotlight and on record, of course, but
undoubtedly one of the more self-aware and articulate of those to have faced that challenge.
'The best of...' makes clear her strength, both as an artist and as an individual, and so
suggests that we can look forward to her returning with new ideas and new material in her
own time. Meanwhile, it offers pleasures worth exploring, for fans and the uninitiated alike.
There has been and still is, no-one else quite like her."
Alan Jackson
The Times, May 1996
Best Of Tanita Tikaran (1997 )
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