Listening to The Tiny is like a whistlestop tour of Marianne Faithful’s career rolled into one song: From innocent girl pop singer to alcoholic ex-junkie in under four minutes and back.
The Tiny’s Ellekari Larsson morphs from one persona to the next between verse and chorus, exchanging blue-eyed folk whispers with a rasping 40-ciggies-a-day cough. The lyrics are no candy floss either. Within the first minute of the opener ‘Last Weekend’ the song’s protagonist is standing at a lovey dovey wedding, bemoaning the fact that her current relationship could implode any day now and certainly will never get to the rings and bubbly stage.
Watch The Video Of ‘Last Weekend’
The first impressions are misleading, however, ‘Gravity & Grace’ is not the last testament of a bunch of strung out junkie rockers. It is actually a clever pop album that gets its edge from the nice girl/broken girl vocal acrobatics. Larsson’s tales of woe are a bit hammed up, but her band mate and husband Leo Svensson creates an instantly catchy soundtrack that sits loosely between modern classical and lounge Jazz. Notice how the cool, detached feel of the backing tracks contrasts with Larsson’s agitated vocals. To my ears, this contrast is what brings ‘Gravity & Grace’ alive.
I’m pretty sure the hidden pop quality of the album is down to producer Paul Webb. A former member of 80’s pop stars Talk Talk of ‘It’s My Life’ fame, Webb worked on the solo debut ‘Out Of Season’ by Portishead singer Beth Gibbons back in 2002. Listen closely and you’ll find echoes of ‘Out Of Season’ on ‘Gravity & Grace’, particularly that jazzy vibe and the sympathetic space around the vocals.
In a nutshell, what you are getting is an album full of finely crafted pop songs with a leftfield feel. Whether you will like the lyrics is a different story. Plenty of fundamentally morose lyricists are/were actually quite entertaining. Leonard Cohen does sarcasm in style, Morrissey sparkles with wit and irony and Ian Curtis had a certain poetic ambiguity. By comparison, ‘Gravity & Grace’ is straight to the point of bluntness.
‘Gravity & Grace’ is The Tiny’s third album, following ‘Close Enough’ (2004) and ‘Starring Somebody Like You’ (2006). The album is due out on 12 April.
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