Since showing up on the open mic circuit as a 20-year-old in London, Lucy Rose Parton has demonstrated herself to be the veritable real deal. A singer/songwriter of rare substance, allied to a seemingly insatiable lust for life, Rose initially made her mark as a semi-permanent touring member of Bombay Bicycle Club whilst making her own music, beginning with 2012's Like I Used To. An immediate hit, alongside her major label and top ten album Work It Out, you felt that somehow Rose's songs were being smothered in some kind of pop ointment, as the men and women in suits searched hard for big radio hits. What Rose eventually concluded was that her songs and her general music making approach needed to be radicalised in order to return to some state of naturalness. With some success under her arms, the scene was set for this to happen.
Something’s Changing is accompanied by a stunning short documentary, acting as a fly-on-the-wall account of Lucy’s debut tour of South America last year. The trip, organised independently by her with the help of fans – performing for free, staying in their houses – became a huge inspiration for the record, and the film is an intimate and emotional account of how it all came together. Performing to these fans she eventually realised that she could just get up there and perform melancholic songs, often laid bare, rather than the upbeat poppy ones she had been encouraged towards. Moreover, a meeting with Brighton’s Tim Bidwell cemented the deal. They would record her album in his living room studio and largely strip it back to its natural order, with the help of mostly Brighton-based guest musicians.
And there is a real naturalness here, accompanied by that pin-drop emotiveness she possesses. It's a world away from her previous album where she has subsequently claimed that the pressures of creating something modern did for her. Instead, she’s always had a preference for the music of the 60s and 70s. Artists such as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Al Green and Carole King inform her work and, on occasion, she rises to the heights of these giants. Such as on the multi-faceted 'Love Song’, where it’s just acoustic and voice to begin with. The journey soon kicks on with the band joining in, as well as some pedal steel, imparting a duality of melancholic uplifting, before seguing into a very short but hearty African flavoured finale. It's intricate, slightly unpredictable, highly melodic and spirited. All the ingredients for a masterpiece, and expertly arranged and produced to boot, with the spot-on production allowing for much space to breathe, the playing generally unfussy, and the dynamics of the band – recorded pretty much live, often with one takes – complimentary to each other.
“It’s just a song, but without it would I have told you this?” sings Lucy meditatively, unleashing her impressive octave-straddling voice on the short album opener ‘Intro', accompanied by just harp, courtesy of Emma Gatrill, before seguing into 'Is This Called Home', that features electric guitar, percussion mallets, voices (courtesy of The Staves), swooping strings and some cello, speeding up before fading out with just guitar. Again, it’s both melancholy and vibrant. The Staves also appear on the stripped-back, melody rich, short and sweet Joni Mitchell vibe of 'Floral Dresses', a personal song about not being a regular sort of girl as far as her family is concerned.
Her musical eclecticism and single-minded determination also comes through on tracks such as 'Second Chance', which begins with a Carole King piano style, before it shifts into an upbeat and rippling stringed acoustic soul-pop affair for its chorus. Ostensibly about self-belief, by this point it's plain clear Rose has it in spades. As she shows on the meandering Neil Young-meets-Pink Floyd deep chords and languid playing of 'Soak It Up', which also features Daughter's Elena Tonra, while 'No Good At All' hints at a love of new school r'n'b. And country music pops into the sound here and there, particularly on the folksy ‘Find Myself’: “Cause you helped me find myself… Find myself within your old dreams”, she sweetly sings.
The album closer is ‘I Can’t Change It All’, of which Rose says was inspired by the people she met in Latin America. “I wanted to do something to help them,” she says. “But at end of it I just thought there was actually very little I could do, and I felt like the only thing I could do was write an album, or write a song for them, and that’s kind of where it came from.”
Inspiration from the core. From the very people who admire, respect, and love what you do. Inspiration from the two-way bonds that develop between artists and their audience. Rose tapped into that with an honesty and unadulterated love, and it shows. This is for her fans, but also for her, too. Something’s changing, and it looks and feels very good.
Jeff Hemmings