Christine Leakey album pre-release review by legendary Mark Wirtz (EMI/Abbey Road Studios Producer and Composer)
LISTEN TO THIS TEN TIMES,
AND EACH TIME YOU LISTEN
HEAR IT FOR THE FIRST TIME. AGAIN.
The problem with originality is that it’s hard to review in the absence of familiarity, comparisons or references. Like, try to explain the taste and texture of an avocado pear, banana or chocolate to someone, perhaps a kid who has never tasted, seen or touched any before, and you’ll go crazy in the head before you surrender the mission as impossible.
Christine Leakey’s new solo album (“Tapping Trees in a Trinket Box of Treasure”) is a such-like challenge. Delicious, seductive, enigmatic, hauntingly captivating, mysterious, ecclectic, cerebral, moody, obscure yet laced with reminiscent undertones, genre-defying yet at once embraceable and undeniably commercial, even seasoned with catchy hooks, marvelous arrangements, and melodies delivered by Christine’s sensual, mesmerizing vocal renditions that slyly get under your skin and stay there.
This (“Tapping Trees in a Trinket Box of Treasure”) is hallucination-friendly, neo-sike pop at its best, which could easily have been recorded in a small, smokey, avant guard Paris night club, a 30’s Chicago cabaret, in a timeless corner of the Twilight Zone, a bohemian bar in New York’s Village,” or a magical circus — but not the kind your parents took you to when you were six years old, rather like a wonderland circus in space.
Like I said at the outset, originality is nigh impossible to describe, and (“Tapping Trees in a Trinket Box of Treasure”) is a very original piece of pop music. Hence, instead of self-defeatingly trying, I merely described how listening to Christine’s work made me feel. The best thing for you to do is — buy a copy and lose yourself in a hypnotically spellbinding music journey! Listen to it twenty times, and….
Mark P. Wirtz
Ivor Novello Award-winning 60’s EMI Records/Abbey Road Studios producer/composer.
