An Excellent Cure For Loneliness

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

Tanita Tikaram

Tanita Tikaram's latest album, her fourth, is a collection of songs that marks her debut as a producer and perhaps her finest collection of songs in a single album to date. Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness is a superbly engineered mix of the rich, earthy music that one has come to expect from Tikaram punctuated by some magnificent and novel instrumentation.

Tikaram used her "Production by Color" approach while writing these songs. She explains: "When I'm starting to work on a song, I like to have a picture in my mind and fill the colors and details of the picture with sound." Tikaram's ideas for her colors come from diverse sources--from films, even from countries. "Love Don't Need No Tyranny," for example, features some of the "colors" of Turkey.

Indeed, the diversity of her sources is reflected in her songs. This variety within the album, accompanied by Tikaram's courage in yet again departing from the hugely successful formula last album, Everybody's Angel, marks her as one of the truly great performers of the day.

"Out On The Town" is a flightly, rapidly moving song with a catchy beat remniscent of "We Almost Got It Together" from The Sweet Keeper, Tikaram's second album. "The Way That I Want You," on the other hand, is a slow, lyrical selection that draws the listener into its world of reflection and thought. One might choose the gentle, rhythmic beat of a song like "I Grant You" before passing on to "Heal You," which magnificently combines alternating slow, lapping lyricism with surging melody.

One of the most interesting songs in the whole album is "To The Drink The Rainbow," which stands out because of the unusual pitch in which Tikaram sings and its unexpected, almost pop-like melody. The song itself is an outcome of a remark that a friend of Tikaram's made to her after both of them had finished watching the Disney movie Fantasia. Tikaram's friend mentioned that it would be great to write a song about drinking the rainbow. The imagery appealed to Tikaram, who already had considered an idea for song about someone who wanted something passionately and was willing to make sacrifices to achieve it. She combined the two ideas to produce one of the most unusual and interesting songs on the album.

Tikaram's uncharacteristically high pitch in "To Drink The Rainbow" is indicative of her maturation and growth as a vocalist. Paradoxically, even though it marks a departure for the singer, the song is characteristic of Tikaram--her willingness to explore, to take risks and test herself as a performer, instead of just sticking to a standard success formula as artists like Tracy Chapman and Debbie Gibson have done. Perhaps this willingness to experiment explains why she continues to work with Mark Isham, with whom she collaborated on the song" Men And Women."

"I like working with Mark., He has a different set of colors and he makes me look at my music from inside, at the way I sing. His musical language pushes me as a vocalist," says Tikaram.

To complement her rich, earthy voice, Tikaram uses interesting and unusual instrumentation. The warm sound that Eleven Kinds of Loneliness exudes comes from her talented band, primarily consisting of Mark Creswell on guitars, Nick Frances on drums and percussion and David Hayes on bass and harmonica. Tikaram herself plays the acoustic guitar, and its rich, warm strains are particularly beautiful on the upbeat, almost funky "Any Reason."

The most interesting instrumentation, though, is on first two songs: "You make the Whole World Cry" and "Elephant." In the first track, Tikaram cleverly combines guitar and percussion to complement a medley of synthesizers and saxophones. She literally creates a wave of rich sound that carries you away with its intense, inherent emotion.

Tikaram worked on "Elephant" as a fun song. "I approached it as a fun beat poem and tried to build up a picture of sounds that were not on your usual instrumental sounds--more like animal sounds," said Tikaram of her song, which pulsates with the slow ambling beat of an elephant's walk and the soaring, exquisite melody that is evinced on "You Make The Whole World Cry" as well.

While Tikaram's voice is one of her greatest strengths, her greatest asset is undoubtedly her lyrics. They are what first won her acclaim, and will continue to bring her praise. Songs like "The Way that I want You" and "Out On The Town" are examples of the incredible maturity, poise, vision and sensitivity that Tikaram has consistently exhibited in penning her songs.

"The soul of a man is many coloured," sings Tikaram in "The Way That I Want You." So is Eleven Kinds of Loneliness. It is an incredible collection of 12 songs from the British singer that resonate with thought, variety and melody that make for perhaps the best music released in a long, long time. Its absence from any collection of music would be an incredible loss.