Review: Katie Melua, Call Off the Search

Katie Melua is what Britney would sound like if she had anything resembling good music taste. Or, perhaps, she’s what Norah Jones would sound like if she didn’t have half the singing voice that she does. Either way you look at it, that’s why Melua manages to be both disappointing and a bit heartening at the same time.

On Call Off the Search, Melua exhibits a fine musical sense, drawing on pop forms from the past that are surprising for someone of her young age. The music, arrangements, and production are all top notch, and, although she didn’t write many of the songs herself, she has a nice, light vocal touch that shows a respect for those forms.

From the opening song, “Call Off the Search,” the listener is rewarded with light blues and jazz songs that draw heavily from the classics. There is an air of familiarity about the whole affair that veers close to trite at times, but never manages to cross that line. She’s at her best on the playful, jazzy tunes like John Mayall’s “Crawling Up a Hill” and the sensual “My Aphrodisiac is You.”

Unfortunately, the song that apparently made her reputation in the UK, “The Closest Thing to Crazy” comes across as a cloying, soundtrack reject. Her youth and inexperience don’t help matters. When she sings “feeling twenty-two, acting seventeen”, it hits you that she really is much closer to the latter than the former. There is precious little gravity to her singing.

What hurts most, though, aside from the fact that what energy it starts with diminishes as the CD wears on, is her voice. At times, it isn’t precisely bad, but it rarely manages to make it to good, either. The comparison to Norah Jones is an obvious one, but the comparison to Britney is at least as appropriate. When Melua sings, I kept seeing an album cover with a pouting pop singer, titled “Britney Sings the Blues.”

As albums go, this one is just okay. It isn’t really bad, it isn’t really good, and it might well fit in the CD player on those special nights when candles are lit, wine is poured, and you’re really hoping to get, ahem, a little further tonight than you did last week. But, if so, it will be behind Norah Jones on the CD changer and it will probably be playing while you are otherwise occupied.