In the three long years since her mostly dazzling debut, Sing To The Moon, Birmingham’s Laura Mvula has taken her time (i.e. faffed about) on its much-delayed successor.
Clearly delighted with 2014’s orchestral version of Sing To The Moon, she’s accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra on an album which states its case in just 37 brisk, flab-free and unashamedly epic minutes.
But the LSO add ballast rather than take control. Mvula has taken to layering her vocals with an Enya-like care and precision; duetting with Wretch 32 on the grandstanding People; impersonating her grandmother on Nan, and taking inspiration from poet Maya Angelou on the thumping, electro-choral jamboree, Phenomenal Woman.
The Dreaming Room may be a mess, but it’s a glorious mess, packed with heroically bonkers ideas (Overcome goes madrigal at one delightful point), propelled by the zig-zagging inspiration of a gifted maverick going her own wonderful way.
(RCA)
