It is an unusual debut, that of the British singer-songwriter Ella Raphael. A record with strong nomadic connotations, a travel diary that the London-based artist wrote during the various stages of an itinerary that saw her land in Australia and then proceed to Boston and Valencia, where she refined her musical studies.
Having grown up listening to her father's records, alternating the jazz of Sarah Vaughan with the pop of the Beatles, or the folk of Karen Dalton with the music of Serge Gainsbourg, Ella Raphael finally unpacks her personal baggage of emotions, memories and musical fascinations with an unadorned elegance and an intriguing vocal versatility.
“Mad Sometimes” is a record full of precious indications of her qualities: Ella moves from the languid and placid country western sounds of “See You Through” to the folktronica of “Somber” without distorting the poetic intensity of the project, she tries her hand at a poignant folk-noir (the title track) evoking both Vashti Bunyan and Josephine Foster and lines up tropicalia, lounge music and folk-pop with the same elegance as Erin Moran in the exotic “Tangled Love”.
Although a sense of dreamy melancholy prevails, “Mad Sometimes” offers more than a glimmer of light: placid contaminations of synths (“Let The Light In”) and seductive atmospheres sixties (“All In”) fit together lightly in a polychrome stylistic mosaic, without ever exceeding in superfluous vocal and instrumental flourishes.
The arrangements are frail, poetic, even when the songs dare (“Outro”) and what remains is a pleasant sensation of nostalgia, but also of bitterness for the perhaps too short duration of the album: 26 minutes and 39 seconds, insufficient to be able to mortgage an equally brilliant future.
05/11/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
