Fact #64811

If I have a favourite singing voice in the world today it belongs to Maria Taylor. I hear her and, ridiculous as it seems, I think I’d like to kiss her. Her third album is an unalloyed delight, rich in imaginative percussion, swoony boy-girl harmonies and deliciously retro synth sounds. It’s a thing of still waters unpredictably rippled by heart-soaring moments. A Chance, for example, is cool acoustic funk shot through with psych guitar, while Cartoons And Forever Plans, a duet with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, is jaunty yet impossibly poignant.
Johnny Black (review first appeared in Hi Fi News, 2009)