Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There should be no doubting the strength of the appeal of Paloma Faith. Like Holland’s Caro Emerald, Paloma Faith crosses the borders between the pop heart and the jazz soul with lots of room for the exuberance of discovery, that tingle you feel run up your spine as she starts to sing and the music that follows her every move, ever sanguine note is like a coiled cobra ready to strike out and bite you pleasantly till you submit to her whim.

For Paloma Faith and her latest album, A Perfect Contradiction, the cobra is soothed by the beauty within and the words of a woman who understands both great style and the substance needed to carry it off. The chic approach wrapped up in charm and polished but with the elegance to show that at the very core, the centre of her world is the way in which the song is heard and enjoyed. All the presentation in the world cannot help the disguise the dredge that appears elsewhere in the world, Paloma Faith certainly knows that and what comes across on A Perfect Contradiction is the right balance in the right place but with that wonderfully coy and cool wink to the listener as they take in the album.

The material on the album is as good as her previous couple of offerings, the ability to be constantly consistent is a huge bonus for anybody who has come across her music. There is no up one minute, sinking to the depths the next; this is a set of songs with that pure like ability to be revelled in which many cannot come near.

The substance is there from the start, the use of a great album cover is perhaps much underrated. Those that just buy their music on line and who have left vinyl and C.D.s infuriatingly behind will probably forget how it used to be the norm that if a group or artist spent money on enticing you in with the cover, if they made it as eye catching as they hoped the music was going to be, then you were on to a sure fire hit.  The cover to A Perfect Contradiction exemplifies that, it is the Michelangelo before the modern age, a cover which slowly draws you in to the music inside, and what great music awaits! Tracks such as Only Love Can Hurt Like This, the brilliance of Other Woman, Trouble With My Baby, Impossible Heart and Love Only Leaves You Lonely are just begging to be heard and savoured, to let that Cobra dance like no other hypnotised creature has ever done so before; to let the listener wallow in gorgeous beauty.

The only contradiction is there is no contradiction, there is no denial, no inconsistency and surely no opposition to the fact that again Paloma Faith has delivered with this album upon her unspoken promise, to entertain and thrill, it is a promise always to be kept.

Ian D. Hall