Albums of The Year # 68 Maria McKee - La Vita Nuova

 From March:

Maria McKee, once of Lone Justice and probably best known for the huge Show Me Heaven single is back, with La Vita Nouva , (taking its name from Dante's elegy to unrequited love), her first album for thirteen years. It's one of the most ambitious albums you're likely to hear this year, a full on, no holds barred document of self scrutiny and self realisation of the sort seldom made anymore.

In many respects it's an old school album. The kind of record that used to be relatively commonplace, from the likes of Bowie, Scott Walker, Dory Previn, Leonard Cohen, Laura Nyro, Tim Buckley, Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush but that very few attempt nowadays, Nick Cave perhaps but not many others come to mind. McKee, has been through seismic life changes in the course of making it, moving partially to London, ending a marriage of over twenty years and coming out in terms of her sexual identity.

So what does it sound like? Lush and incredibly overwrought frankly. The arrangements are baroque, orchestral  chamber pieces of the most ornate and elaborate stripe all the bows have bows on them. Some of the songs are quite beautiful balancing acts of reach, some just don't come together, Down to the Heart of London is one of the best things here, showing McKee frolicking around her new hometown, no doubt in full flowing Victorian gown with Blake, Swinburne and Vaughn Williams swimming around her head.The lyrics here are every bit as ambitious as the musical trappings.

Perhaps the greatest influence on what's going on here musically is McKee's late older brother Bryan, eighteen years her senior and a man who had to play second fiddle to Arthur Lee for the most part of his time in Love but was still responsible for at least two of their finest numbers in Alone Again Or and Old Man. The arrangements of La Vita Nouva are pure Love, Gothic elegies recast for a female sensibility.

It goes on for too long. At least two tracks could have been pruned at no loss to the overall impact of the record but McKee is clearly in full showboat mode. The best songs here actually attain the heights they strain for. You might need a lie down afterwards but if you're like me you'll be back for another listen. An impossibly brave and admirable album.