Album Review: This Girl's in Love (A Bacharach & David Songbook) by Rumer

After trying her hand at writing her own vintage-inspired material with 2014's Into Colour, singer Rumer returns to her core inspiration of covering classic '60s and '70s pop with 2016's sophisticated This Girl's in Love (A Bacharach & David Songbook). Produced by her husband and longtime collaborator Rob Shirakbari at Capitol Studios, This Girl's in Love finds Rumer applying her supple vocals and soft-focus aesthetic to songs written by the legendary team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. While Rumer has most certainly sung many of these songs in live settings, it's surprising, given her association with the time period, that she's never actually recorded any of this material in the past.

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Rumer’s career has rather flatlined since her acclaimed 2010 debut, Seasons of My Soul, with subsequent covers album Boys Don’t Cry and original collection Into Colour proving underwhelming. On the face of it, the last thing the world needs is yet another take on Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s glittering catalogue, but she brings the heart and voice to make it soar. Her producer-arranger husband, Rob Shirakbari, who worked with Bacharach for years, provides the sumptuous orchestration these songs deserve.

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Cover songs are notoriously hard to execute well. By their very nature, you’re attempting to replicate something that many will see as untouchable. It’s not easy to capture the essence of a song that made it so good in the first place. Then try and do a whole album of songs that aren’t yours, that are held with such high regard by so many people.

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When Rumer’s latest project was first announced, it seemed a great idea: the opportunity to showcase the honeyed tones of a singer, who has justifiably drawn comparisons to the heaven-on-earth voice of Karen Carpenter, in an homage to the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. That said, there are two challenges that the Pakistani-born British singer-songwriter has had to overcome. First, after the wide acclaim for her debut album Seasons of My Soul (2010), there has been a sense of career stagnation.

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