Product Description

Katie Melua’s long awaited second album, Piece By Piece, is released nearly two years after the debut of her multi-platinum selling album, Call Off The Search. Piece By Piece demonstrates Katie’s significant growth as an artist, containing a larger percentage of self-penned songs than her first album.

Track Listing

1. Shy Boy
2. Nine Million Bicycles
3. Piece By Piece
4. Halfway Up The Hindu Kush
5. Blues In The Night
6. Spider's Web
7. Blue Shoes
8. On The Road Again
9. Thank You, Stars
10. Just Like Heaven
11. I Cried For You
12. I Do Believe In Love

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4413 in Music
• Released on: 2005-09-26
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Piece By Piece--the second album from Georgia-born chanteuse cum naturalised Brit, Katie Melua, and the successor to her multi-million selling Call Off The Search--begins teasingly with the soft-peddled "come hither" jazz flirtations of "Shy Boy" and concludes with the whispering philosophical torch song resignation of "I Do Believe In Love". The two songs represent opposite ends of the emotional spectrum--sultry and kittenish on the one hand, solitary and ruminative on the other--but they also offer clues that the cutesy, crazy, easy listening Melua of Mike Batt's mentorship may be gradually acceding to the full bloom of self-determined musical adulthood. Melua's songs are often the more fretful and organic, the ghostly title track and the lovely "I Cried for You" are especially recommended, while the bluesier numbers (particularly the cover of the classic "Blues In The Night") seem shoehorned-in gratuitously to match an anticipated demographic. Batt's contributions are melodic, memorably buoyant and childlike, the Chinese-flavoured "Nine Million Bicycles" and the naggingly catchy "Halfway Up The Hindu Kush" are both charming despite their naive, pseudo-ethnicity and currently offer, particularly when compared to something as ponderously wooly as "Spider's Web", a necessary fun counterbalance to Melua's burgeoning compositional skills.

At this stage, Piece By Piece fits together nicely like a little jigsaw puzzle. And even if it didn't, Melua would still sound simply ambrosial singing from a washing machine repair manual. --Kevin Maidment

More to Explore
See more music by Katie Melua	Call off the Search (For Piano, Voice & Guitar)	Call off the Search (CD + DVD)	On The Road Again ~ Katie Melua (DVD)
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CD Description
Sophomore album from Brit success story Melua follows up her million selling 2003 debut 'Call Off The Search'. Once again under the tutelage of her mentor Mike Batt, the precocious 21-year-old has turned in another set of rock standards and epic orchestral pop, and this time has co-written some of the songs herself. Features the single 'Nine Million Bicycles'.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful
What a wonderful, wonderful talent. This beautiful girl has a fantastic, dreamy voice and this album really does her justice. The CD/DVD "special edition" gives some extra features, but it is the music, and the voice, that enthralls.

Jazzy and Cool
This album is really atmospheric and shows of Katie Melua's skill as a songwriter as well as her hypnotic voice and all-round musical ability. Can anyone actually listen to Nine Million Bicycles without endlessly humming it afterwards? A great mood album perfect for chill-out times.

Dull
A woefully bland album, with 'lite' arrangements and sappy singing that's possibly meant to sound 'sultry' but ends up anodyne and flat. The whole thing is incredibly lifeless. 'On The Road Again' utterly destroys the Canned Heat track. All the groove is gone. It's a big mistake. 'Halfway Up The Hindu Kush' is interesting for its surprisingly extreme innuendo. Did Melua know what this phrase meant when she used it? It's a shame that the rest of the album is so dreary because she sings well in places. However, the material is bog-standard and the arrangements are clichéd and predictable. Melua may have led an incredibly exciting life but you'd never know it from this improbably dull album.