Imelda May

Life. Love. Flesh. Blood

Decca

WHEN Imelda May appeared a last summer's Southern Fried weekend in Perth, some of her longtime fans were initially perplexed by her new look and sound, but eight months later the appearance of a T Bone Burnett-produced album that moves her decisively away from the rockabilly girl stylings that served her well for a decade confirms that her new direction can only expand the legions of devotees.

Which is not to say that she has entirely abandoned the retro-rock'n'roll of the Love Tattoo, Mayhem and Tribal albums, but here a track like Bad Habit sits comfortably alongside more soulful material, like Black Tears, the Jeff Beck-featuring song that announced her new direction to viewers of Jools Holland's New Year Hootenanny show. Holland himself features on the song When It's My Time, but the star instrumentalist across the whole set is guitarist Marc Ribot who forsakes his more angular stylings for something more akin to the playing of Elvis sideman James Burton and Stax sessioneer Steve Cropper.

With titles like Call Me and Should've Been You consciously echoing classic soul and r'n'b songs of the past, there is something a little formulaic about this blatant pitch at trans-Atlantic mainstream success, all the way to the inevitable acoustic country-tinged confessional closer The Girl I Used To Be, but pitches at Adele-level superstardom don't come much classier than this. You can even forgive Miss May the fact that a couple of the performances here are straight from the Bonnie Tyler book of power balladry.

Keith Bruce