Mara Carlyle
Floreat
Release Date: Aug 30, 2011
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
Record label: Ancient & Modern
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Album Review: Floreat by Mara Carlyle
Great, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
Shropshire-born Mara Carlyle's second album has a tumultuous history lurking behind its stately songcraft. Originally shelved by EMI in 2008, Carlyle had all but given up on getting it released when Ikea used her song Pianni on one of their adverts. Originally titled Nuzzle, the album now arrives under the the much more appropriate Floreat, a latin word meaning "let her bloom".
Based on rating 7/10
Seven years is a long time; over two thousand five hundred days at last count. Seven years ago Michelle McManus was at number one, the Hutton enquiry was just kicking off and the England cricket team hadn’t even begun to think about climbing the ICC rankings. And seven years ago Mara Carlyle released her debut, The Lovely. Whilst it wasn’t a sufficiently seismic event to make it onto Wikipedia’s notable events of the year, it was a well-received record that sat alongside a clutch of strong female singer-songwriter releases, amongst them the likes of Joanna Newsome’s The Milk-Eyed Mender.
Opinion: Excellent
It's often not the most 'extreme' or 'difficult' – whatever those words mean - artists that fall between the cracks. There can be nothing sadder, and conversely, nothing more thrilling to stumble across, than great pop languishing in obscurity. By pop I mean: music conversant with reasonably conventional song structures, a seductive way with melody; music that isn't self-consciously abrasive.
Opinion: Excellent
An album to be loved from the Shropshire-born purveyor of ‘Elizabethan ska’. Nick Levine 2011 It started with a kitty. Well, sort of. After her song Pianni was picked to soundtrack that IKEA advert in which a posse of pussies indulge their passion for home furnishings, Mara Carlyle finally secured a release for this belated second album.