Mesmerising: ALA.NI arrives fully-formed on her debut album
Jean-Baptiste Mondino
Jane Cornwell10 June 2016
An alumni of the Sylvia Young Talent School, and a former session singer for the likes of Mary J Blige and Damon Albarn, West London’s ALA.NI nonetheless seems to have descended, fully formed, from the heavens, accompanied by harp-playing angels.
ALA.NI - You & I
ALA.NI - You & I
Her hushed, bluesy voice, captured via a 1930s ribbon microphone, caresses on opener Cherry Blossom, a steel guitar-led paean to love’s first blush - and continues to mesmerise as the affair that informs this confident debut crashes and burns around her.
Self-penned songs such as Roses & Wine and Darkness At Noon are genuinely affecting, defying description - she’s called her sound “dark Disney” - and hinting at greater things to come.
(Naïve Records)
