Up to this point, Imelda May based her work on retro-rockabilly style and she has been doing it with grit, quality and confidence, starting from the sound to the image that included leather jacket and high waist skirts. Imelda's new album comes after her divorce with Darrel Higham who was not only her romantic partner, but also main performance partner in her career. This dramatic life change inevitably marks the whole record.
Imelda needed to create her new material on her own and on the cover we see her out of trademark stylized rockabilly style. She ditched high fashion for a more natural look. The change in appearance is also followed by a change in sound, but as you will see in the continuation of this review, it is not that big of a change that would send her previous fans away. Life.Love.Flesh.Blood. is a melting pot of organic, old-school styles such as soul, blues, vocal jazz and gospel, enriched with occasional radio-friendly pop choruses. The album is produced by a guy who made his name by working on these types of roots albums, T Bone Burnett. Imelda and T formed a band for the purpose of recording this effort, and one of the members is guitarist Mark Ribot who definitely put his idiosyncratic touch on the album.
The album unfolds with two grandiose soul ballads with simplistic arrangements, Call Me and Black Tears. Imelda's extravagant vocal is in the focus, while her old pal Jeff Beck joins her in Black Tears. After slow intro comes attack in the form of Should've Been You, cutting post-breakup song with hook melody and irresistible baseline. The tension is gradually building up here all the way to the moment when Imelda's voice cracks and fuses catharsis.
Human and Leave Me Lonely appear similar in their tenacity to win radio over, and both of the tracks offer cool verse arrangements that turn into catchy choruses. We also got few sexy pop noir numbers here - Sixth Sense and How Bad Can A Good Girl Be in style of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. Ribot's solo stands out in shopaholic blues Bad Habit, while Jools Holland gives his piano talent on gospel song When It's My Time. Levitate and The Girls I Used To Be are the softest tunes on the album, with the later one witnessing Imelda contemplating on her freshly gained motherhood.
Life. Love. Flesh. Blood. is raw, sensual, seductive, erotic and poweful. If this is a sparkle of future Imelda May, I can not wait for that future to come.
