GARDEN IN MY MIND
(Sunnyside)
8/10
Some flowers are at their most beautiful just before they fully bloom. Joanna Wallfisch’s singing is like that, suggesting restraint, as if her throat and heart are not fully opened. Yet implicit in this restraint is a delicacy, a purity and even a fragile sense of innocence. This much could be said of many singers. What sets Wallfisch apart is that the guilelessness of the voice is used to convey her knowing lyrics.
Her words tell of a world in which, love, hurt and loss can occur, and yet somehow they have a sense of being at one remove, like an amazed Alice telling us about the unlikely events behind the looking glass. Her imagery deepens the dreaminess, thereby looping the lyrics back into that wistful singing style. Compounding the elegiac mood is the use of a string quartet in addition to the superb piano of Dan Tepfer. Yet Wallfisch can also deploy a keen wit, and the sonic colour palette is expanded by her naive ukulele on Satin Grey and by Tepfer’s melodica on Brighton Beach. Enchanting.