Latest release, `East West', features singer and not much else
by Ken Capobianco
CNC Arts Writer in the Watertown TAB & Press (Aug. 14, 1997)
Good singers are able to conjure up a moment in listener' pasts that have been long buried in the unconscious. A single note or a delicately phrased line can evoke memories of times gone by. Romance on a chilly San Francisco night. Heartbreak while mindlessly riding on a subway. Yearning and desire on a misty Cape Cod beach.
Julia Fordham can do that and more. Fordham has carved a niche for herself as one of music's purest vocalists. The singer, who was born in Great Britain and now lives in Los Angeles, has developed the reputation of being a pop chanteuse through her first four records, and has garnered a large following despite the fact that she's never had a single in the Top 40.
Fordham, who plays the Paradise on Aug.21, just released her fifth and best disc, "East West" (Virgin), and it's a departure for her. Gone is the lush production that marked her earlier work; replacing it is a stark minimalism. Fordham and co-producer Michael Brook (who's worked with Jane Siberry, among others) smartly keep her lovely, pristine voice at the forefront. It makes for some gorgeous, lyrical pop.
"This time I wanted to reduce the songs to their essence, cut out the extraneous elements like orchestration and simply let the songs stand up by themselves," Fordham says from L.A. "I've never really made a record like this and it may not be something that the audience will expect, but I hope that they give it a fair chance."
Actually, it may be difficult for audiences to hear Fordham's music if they don't buy the record because outside of Adult Contemporary radio, not many formats are varied enough to include her.
"That's one of the strange things about America," she says. "But I'm not alone in that there are many pop singers who fall through the cracks here, but are popular and on the radio in other places around the world. It's not something that I'm able to figure out."
Fordham's debut, self-titled record came in 1988. It was followed by "Porcelain" (1990), the record that was a good starting place for the uninitiated. Beautiful stuff. Her next two records, "Swept" (1991) and "Falling Forward" (1994), had their moments, but they were also overproduced.
While she is a good songwriter, Fordham's meal ticket is her voice. At times crystalline and fragile, at other times full-bodied and rich, when she wraps her voice around a lyric, Fordham makes it her own. But she has often been referred to as an icy or chilly vocalist, something she doesn't understand.
"Frankly, I think my voice, especially on this new record --- despite the rather sparse music --- is quite warm. I've never understood why I've been described that way. Sometimes, I think that is actually just someone projecting how I look upon my music," she says, bemused. "That's just a guess. I really don't sound chilly."
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