Computer issues and the obliteration of emails meant Little Sparks somehow got buried, so it’s a rather belated review of the Shropshire singer’s second album, one which pushes past the folksier tones of her debut into more ethereal pop territory with songs about finding hope, getting back on your emotional feet and finding the beauty out there. Dressed in synth, piano, violin, cello and soft, and understated percussion as accompaniment to her guitar (though largely foregoing her percussive playing style) and her hushed and wispy, bruised vocals.
Introduced on Harley Eblen’s melancholic cello, the dreamy title track opens proceedings, Reid saying that it’s about how, even in the midst of the mundane, we can find little sparks of light worth chasing and holding on to, as she sings about “the moments painted gold/Slowly learning how to hold/All we love/Learn to live on what we got”.
Vocally multi-tracked, the fingerpicked ‘Let Your Love Run Cold’ with its understated synth parts is, as the title suggests, about a relationship that’s lost its heat (“I know we’ve gone past the point of no return/I know we are defeated”) and not clinging to any ideas of rekindling (“Please don’t ever ask me how I am/False hopes could never mend a broken heart”).
Playing steel-strung guitar backed by Joseph Futak’s keyboards and joined by Adrien Latgé on vocals, ‘Against The Tide’ is of a similar frame of mind (“How do we know/To say goodbye/To shed a tear in your name and get by…I loved you first/Now we’re out of time… feel the tide/Pulling me under”) asking in multi-layered vocals “is this real life//Or am I falling apart”. Picking up that thread, the smoke-curled, chilled synth-pop ‘Calling On Your Ghost’ explores how things still tug even when a connection seems broken (“Calling on your ghost/In the darkness/Find a hand to hold/When it all falls down/Find a way back home/In the darkness/Calling on your ghost/In the silence”).
A kindred hushed mood embraces the whisperingly sung ‘Your Story’ (“Tell me the bones of your story/Where did it go wrong?…I know you loved him through the good days/You loved him through the bad ones too…You love him now he’s gone for good”), Essa Flett’s fiddle offering sensitive accompaniment to the strummed guitar and flows over into the piano-laced light jazz vibes of ‘The Devil Calls’; by now, it’s obvious there’s not going to be anything here to drag you on to any dance floor.
It hazily shimmers to a close on the back of the brushed snares and fiddle of ‘Beauty In Sadness’ (“We’ll find comfort in the chaos”), the steady walking drum beat of the jazz-coloured and quietly menacing ‘Daisy’ where the narrative travels to pre-prohibition New York, and a rippling, light-footed lyrically downbeat ‘Every Stranger’ (“We’ll navigate our days Through the graveyard of glasses/Thrown away”) with its faint hints of Simon & Garfunkel and that recurring air of regret and loss (“Keep thinking every stranger looks like you/Be falling hard be falling fast but/In the end they’ll never be like you”) before the final ‘Cracks Forming’ where echoey drums and her gutsier vocals heat up a rockier dynamic. I’m not sure what those who tuned into her via the previous album will make of Little Sparks, but on its own terms it certainly warrants discovery.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.facebook.com/jessiereidmusic
‘Your Story’:
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