Lucie Silvas

LUCIE SILVAS
"BREATHE IN"
(Mercury/Europe, 2004)


"Twisting The Chain"


I honestly didn't think much of this album after picking it up on a whim from the Tower Records clearance bin, so I traded it in at the local store about a year and a half ago. Since then, her lovely bilingual re-recording of her single "What You're Made Of" with the late, great Grégory Lemarchal on his debut album -- and my discovery that this disc also contains, of all things, a Metallica cover -- sparked my renewed interest in this album. Fortunately for me, the local shop still hadn't sold it when I went back last week looking for it, and they even cut me a break on buying it back.

How could I not have appreciated British singer Lucie Silvas before? I suppose the closest vocal comparison I can readily make (bearing in mind my limited familiarity with female voices) is to Christina Aguilera -- she can be delicately intimate in one track, and boldly brassy in another -- and she even has vaguely the same timbre. Not quite as soulful as Joss Stone (except maybe on the pseudo-gospel number "The Longer We're Apart"), but not quite as pop as Mandy Moore (though the bouncy title track comes close), there's really not a bad song on here.

It turns out that Lucie Silvas is something of a songwriter as well, having penned tracks for Will Young, Gareth Gates, and others. Not only am I sorry I ever got rid of this disc, and lucky beyond reason to have been able to get it back, but I'm putting her second album on my wish list right now.