FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Natalie Imbruglia - Firebird
___________
IN November…
it will be twenty-five years since Natalie Imbruglia’s debut album, Left of the Middle, was released. I fondly remember that album coming out. Bolstered by the gigantic hit single, Torn, I was fascinated by an artist so different to her peers. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, Imbruglia announced she was taking the album on an anniversary tour. With so many great tracks and consistently brilliant vocal performances from Imbruglia, that album remains underrated. Her fifth studio album, Male, was released in 2015. Receiving mixed reviews, it was the Australian legend covering songs by male artists. Her interpretations are fine, though 2021’s Firebird sort of announced this revitalised and strengthened artist. Produced by MyRiot (Tim Bran and Roy Kerr), Natalie Imbruglia, Albert Hammond Jr., Gus Oberg, Dave Izumi Lynch and Romeo Stodart in various locations during lockdowns (the album features songs co-written by Albert Hammond Jr., KT Tunstall, Roy Kerr, Tim Bran and others), I think that it ranks alongside her very best work. With her voice sounding as powerful, rich and strong as ever, this is an artist whose work and talent warrants greater acclaim. Although Firebird did receive positivity and some great reviews – some pointed out (the album) was a mixture of rebirth and nostalgia -, there were some that were more mixed. Even though this feature is about repurposing and revisiting albums from the past five years that are worth another spin, I am listening to some albums from last year that I either overlooked or I feel were not given the dues they should have. Even though there are co-writes on the album, it is Imbruglia who stands out.
She owns every song and inhabits them completely. It is not a case of someone singing other people’s words without her own input and impact. This is her at her most true and personal, I think. Firebird came after a long period of writer’s block for Imbruglia. You can tell how cathartic and satisfying it was for her overcoming that. Firebird is spilling over with terrific tracks and some of Natalie Imbruglia’s most impressive performances. Reaching the top ten in the U.K., Firebird was a success. It bodes well for future recordings. It would be great to think that she may have more than enough material to head into the studio to start work on her seventh studio album. I want to bring in a couple of Firebird reviews that seem to come to the same conclusion: this is the decades-successful artist back in the form of her life. Renewed and inspired, Firebird did win hearts in the media. This is what Albumism said in their review:
“Although its roots stretch back as far as 2006, Natalie Imbruglia’s fourth long player Come To Life wouldn’t make landfall on her native Australian shores until October 2009. Having recruited an impressive cast of writer-producers featuring the likes of Brian Eno, Ben Hillier, Gary Clark and Chris Martin (of Coldplay), the singer-songwriter expanded on an already winning AOR approach with alternative electronic textures. The result was an affair soused in an even richer, dimensional sound that should have taken Imbruglia to the next level. But, as the saying goes, the best-laid plans…
Island Records, Imbruglia’s then-record company, incredulously withheld the album from wider release outside of the Oceania territories it initially debuted in; the United Kingdom wouldn’t receive Come To Life until February 2010. What was worse than its staggered rollout? The lack of any real ground game to promote the record and its two singles, “Wild About It” and “Want.”
Imbruglia did her best to champion this project she’d sunk so much of herself into—Come To Life had been issued via Island and her own Malabar imprint. However, without the mechanisms of a major label in place to ensure its survival, her finest effort fell into obscurity.
What occurred next was a headlong plunge into a debilitating creative dry spell. In the six years following that crisis, Imbruglia kept busy with other personal and professional pursuits before returning to a drastically changed popular music landscape with Male (2015). Her only offering for Portrait Records saw Imbruglia exclusively reinterpret works from artists of the opposite sex such as Daft Punk (“Instant Crush”), Josh Pyke (“The Summer”), Neil Young (“Only Love Can Break Your Heart”), and Modern English (“I Melt with You”)—to name some.
Reviewers mostly took to the LP with affection, commending Imbruglia for her good taste and noting that her voice remained quite the effective tool. And though a year would separate Male from the small-scale European tour it spawned in April/May of 2017, she courted additional acclaim.
Buoyed by the warm reception that greeted her fifth record, Imbruglia started to consider plotting a course for her sixth album, Firebird. Her first collection of original material tendered in over a decade also marks her launch on the BMG label. Their respective commercial fortunes aside, both Come to Life and Male had Imbruglia refining her established aesthetic sensibilities while subsequently pushing them forward.
Does Firebird maintain that momentum? In a word: yes. A core tenet of Imbruglia’s artistic method is collaboration—Albert Hammond Jr., Rachel Furner, Romeo Stodhart, Caroline Watkins, Francis “Eg” White, and KT Tunstall are just some of the tunesmiths and musicians she asked along for this ride. Their contributions lend the stock on Firebird a stately polish that points to the keen songcraft essential to Imbruglia’s output since her debut album Left Of The Middle (1998). But Firebird isn’t solely a showcase for the talent onboarded—there’s a human heart to the material here.
Imbruglia’s frankness about her struggles with writer’s block—a byproduct of the chaotic industry circumstances that sidelined Come To Life—signposts that she has conquered that impediment. Her way with her pen on Firebird certainly suggests so. At 46, having become a mother in 2019, Imbruglia is a woman whose life is rife with experience of all sorts and that is expressed on the album.
From its opener (and lead single) “Build It Better,” to its closing title piece and all the selections in between, the elements of catharsis, release, reinvention, and romance suffuse their narratives. As the lead scribe on all fourteen cuts, Imbruglia’s personal touch is executed with inventive care and detail. Specifically, entries like “Maybe It’s Great,” “Change Of Heart” and “Invisible Things” evince just how well she steers clear of saccharine storytelling and opts for direct, evocative writing instead. In a true demonstration of her skill in this regard, everything contained on Firebird is cast in such a way that listeners not only connect with her, but they can also find themselves in these songs too.
But what are words without music? Imbruglia joins with Tim “myriot” Bran (of Dreadzone)—the principal producer of Firebird—in a co-production capacity to make sure that the lyrical content of the LP is supported by equally ambitious sonic backdrops. Darting between snappy soul (“Nothing Missing”), layered synth-pop (“What It Feels Like”), drive-time rock (“On My Own”) and sprawling adult contemporary ballads (“Dive to the Deep”), Imbruglia’s fealty to engaging, stylish pop is still intact.
Longtime fans familiar with the particulars of her work to date will recognize much of the sounds she employs on this album have been tapped before; this isn’t a bad thing. What is new is the freshness that permeates the overall production of Firebird. Bran and Imbruglia ensure that every programming fleck and instrumental flourish is never out of place—but nothing ever comes across as overly fussy.
Two great examples of the pair’s method manifest with “Just Like Old Times” and “Not Sorry.” The former track is dressed in spicy jazz rhythms, whereas the latter cut is a sun-dappled slice of uptempo guitar-pop—each are excellent vehicles for Imbruglia’s voice. Its emotive tincture reaches a truly resonant peak on “River,” a parcel of gospel-tinged folk that benefits from the vocal punch of Imbruglia's mid-range.
Like any album worth its salt, every composition housed on Firebird is individually compelling, but when the set is taken in its entirety, it is guaranteed to draw in and hold the attention of its audience for the duration of its run-time. Having fielded triumph and difficulty in equal measure, Imbruglia rises like the namesake of her record, stronger and more focused in her artistic aim than ever before.
Welcome back Ms. Imbruglia!”.
If some felt that Firebird lost steam at some point and there was not a great sense of consistency, I would disagree. There is a great mixture of sounds throughout. Every song wins its place on the album, and I feel the songs are sequenced so that we get flow and a great listening experience. The last two tracks, River and Firebird, are among the best on the album. Even if you have not listened to a Natalie Imbruglia album before, I would recommend you giving Firebird a try. This review from the Evening Standard makes for great reading:
“Natalie Imbruglia is sorry she’s late - not to the stage, where she emerges to plinky plonky spa chimes very punctually and launches into her first song with no messing about, but to release an album. It’s been twelve years since her last record of original songs - 2009’s Come To Life - so when she tells the sold out crowd at Lafayette she’s excited to be there “especially after such a long period of writer’s block” she really means it. The joy that emanates from the stage is so pure, it almost doesn’t matter that a lot of the songs are brand new to the audience or that Imbruglia’s having a couple of issues with her throat: the sheer exhilaration of performing filters through. “There’s nothing missing here,” she sings in the set opener, pointing to herself as she does.
I’ll have what Imbruglia is having. She looks and acts as youthful as the wide eyed pop-grunge babe she was in 1997 when her biggest hits came out. Dressed like an 80s goth en route to prom, almost every song sees her twirling around the stage and stomping her boots (during the punk rawk rendition of Big Mistake, her guitarist even head bangs). She treats the audience like old friends and though that illusion is later chipped by the revelation that she has a lot of actual friends at the show, her frequent finger points and knowing grins make us all feel like we’re in the club. There’s a sense that this crowd would do literally anything she asked of them; at one point she manages to get a clap-along going with one single smack of the hands.
Though most of the set list centred on songs from an album that is yet to come out (Firebird is released this Friday), she wisely includes a chunk of 90s hits in the middle and seems as happy to be singing them as anything more recent. A sea of grins broke out during the opening strums of Torn but it was Smoke that slayed, Imbruglia hugging the mic and almost taking a run up at it for the heart-rending chorus.
It was not the only moment when it seemed Imbruglia was really going through something. There was a point during her newer songs at which she stopped the whirligig dancing and stood at the mic, eyes shut, singing the title track to her album. We might as well not have been there. It was a moment of pure feeling: just Imbruglia and her song. A perfect mix of nostalgia and rebirth, even in 2021 Imbruglia deserves her place in the spotlight”.
One of the excellent releases of last year, Natalie Imbruglia’s Firebird is a really strong album with some of her best tracks. I keep thinking back to 1997’s Left of the Middle and how far she has come as an artist. Still so popular and interesting, I hope that we get many more albums from her. Now that things are starting to improve regarding the pandemic, this may translate to a lot more gigs for Imbruglia. I have said how another album would be welcomed…though she will be hoping to get Firebird on the road. If you have not heard the album before, I would say that it is…
WELL worth your time.