Flooding Out The Wombles?

I didn’t think much about Katie Melua when she first established herself as, what seemed to me, a fairly bland singer of twee songs, particularly the rather excruciating one about nine million bicycles in Beijing. She also had an association with the king of commercial bilge going back to the cheesy songs in Seaside Special in the 1970s and, of course, the Wombles – Mike Batt. I was surprised he was still around although I seem to remember him trying his hand at classical crossover music some time.

So I was amazed to hear ‘The Flood’ – Katie Melua’s recent single which seemed to have been designed preternaturally to include almost everything I like in a pop music track. The song is wonderful in just about every way imaginable – and credit is due largely to Melua’s new producer and writing collaborator on ‘The Flood’, William Orbit. I’ve liked Orbit’s work ever since I bought what was just about the first single he was involved with – ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ by Bass-O-Matic in the late 80s. He then went on to work on some of the most seminal music of the 90s – including the hypnotic ‘Pure Shores’ by All Saints and quite a bit of stuff with Madonna.

‘The Flood’ is an utterly schizophrenic track. The first couple of verses and choruses are a slow ballad sung over an adamant bass line and orchestral accompaniment. The chorus is fantastic: Katie Melua’s voice suddenly soars octaves above the chorus – demonstrating that she has far more than the few tones range of most pop singers. It’s slightly reminiscent of the sort of dramatic music that Kate Bush would make.

Then the song suddenly speeds up with the introduction of a folky-acoustic guitar into double time (something that The Beatles ‘A Day in the Life’ does for its final verse). For a glorious minute or so the track turns from something that could have been in a West End musical into a track one could imagine being played in one of these party-until-the-sun-comes-up Ibiza events. Everything in the production is used so economically and subtly – for example the distorted guitars and the muted brass backing the vocals from ‘turn up the light’ onwards. What’s most bizarre is the halting snare drum used on the off-beat to push the rhythm forward – very similar to the Beatles (again) in ‘Get Back’ –but also almost like a marching military band.

The vocals on the fast section are a complete contrast to what came before and comes afterwards. Katie Melua sings like some kind of cosmic oracle in (yet another Beatles echo) a vocal like John Lennon’s on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.

The lyrics are full of imperatives too, which helps the effect, ‘Don’t trust your eyes…Know in your heart…Turn on the light and feel the ancient rhythm.’ I’m particularly taken by this as Katie Melua looks a bit to my mind like Sarah Brightman did in her Hot Gossip days when the classic ‘I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper’ was released in the late 70s and I can imagine her belting out this section like a female character in ‘Blake’s 7’ (Servalan anyone?).

And then sung against the incantatory vocal is a counterpoint line of backing vocals – and I love songs that suddenly pull together two simultaneous melodies. These backing vocals echo the first, slower part of the song (‘Nothing is to blame’) which creates a fantastic tension.

I like percussion in a track and always feel that it’s consciously very underrated but plays a huge role in subconscious appreciation of a piece of music. ‘The Flood’ suddenly seems to collapse under the weight of the above mentioned tension in a massive crash of cymbals and bass drum beats – slowing the fast beat like a juggernaut and re-instating the previous ballad for a climactic ending. It’s brilliant – like some of the best classical music it simultaneously unites a seeming cataclysm with a serene calm.

It’s one of the oddest and most original pieces of music I’ve heard in a long time – and I can listen to it repeatedly and still enjoy it enormously.

I bought the album ‘The House’ – which has taken a while to grow on me and is filled with material that’s more conventional Melua style – pleasant, whimsical meditations about aliens and red balloons. The album has also had the Rick Nowells treatment on a few tracks. He’s a producer who seems to provide a certain type of female singer with sure-fire hits – starting over 20 years ago with Belinda Carlisle, then moving on to Stevie Nicks, The Corrs, Dido (‘Here With Me’) and (I think) Madonna.

There’s a track on ‘The House’ that’s almost comically Nowells – which might end up as a single. It’s both lyrically and musically ludicrous – it’s called ‘Plague of Love’ – and has an incredibly catchy chorus.

I’ve almost done a complete reversal of opinion on Katie Melua. From thinking she was a bland, MOR vehicle for a past-it Svengali, I now think, if you look carefully enough you’ll find she’s incredibly original and quite odd – and one of the genuinely subversive type of artists I most respect.