New Music Tuesday: Martina Topley-Bird's 'Some Place Simple'

I had a bit of trouble trying to find something to be interested in this week, searching my various sources for new albums this week. I'm pretty sure I listened to about 20 various new releases Myspace band pages that I would love to un-hear. Needless to say, I was very close to skipping this week's new release Tuesday.

That was until I found this. While I'm not even quite positive today was the release date, I don't really care at this point, because I was immediately drawn to Topley's sound.

The album's title is a perfect nomer (minus the mis-) with a toned down, simply orchestrated and beautifully vocalized collection of tracks.

In doing some simple research on her, I found her to be a collaborator on the first Tricky album, which would explain why her voice was a tid bit familiar. But rather, the tone she reminded me of, was of a slightly more subdued, yet sublime and more articulate Sia Furler (ala her album, 'Some People Have Real Problems').

All of the instrumentation are distinctly muted allowing MTB's voice to play center stage, which is perfect for overall sound. I don't have many albums that hit me fairly instantly as sounding this plain good immediately.

Interestingly enough, the album's architecture is part of what I find to be the most intriguing about the overall composition. The track titled 'Intro' is at number 7, letting me know that this whole time that the previous six tracks, MTB has been acting as her own warm-up act. And as promised and alluded to by the title 'Intro' its the beginning of a more upbeat and show stealing set of songs that treat the rest of the album as the main event.

Some highlights from this track set include the Nancy Sinatra's 'Bang Bang' inspired sound of 'Sandpaper Kisses', and the album finisher 'Harpsichord Kiss' sendoff track that leaves you feeling like the instrumental is pleasantly waving 'goodbye' and asking you to visit again sometime soon. Just an overall great album from an artist I'm glad to have just learned about today, and look forward to hearing more soon.

Martina Topley-Bird's 'Some Place Simple' -> 4.85/5

ADDENDUM: It turns out I didn't do enough research into her older albums to realize that this is a LIVE compilation album with just a few new tracks. However, considering it took me a while to find the information without noticing at all, I am even further impressed with the sound quality and clarity of the album.