It's the lead single from Katie Melua's beautiful new album (which we reviewed here), and now it's got an equally beautiful video to go with it. Better Than A Dream is every bit the warming, elegant singer-songwritery craftsmanship you go to an artist like Melua for, and delivered in this touching live clip, the song's love-wrapped message is conveyed all the more plainly. We're in love.
The riotous thrill-ride of William Orbit produced masterpiece The Flood aside, you generally know what you’re getting with Katie Melua. With Secret Symphony – the singer’s fifth studio effort – Melua treads her traditional baroque path through a collective of melodious acoustic numbers. The record plays things safe – Secret Symphony is as MOR as adult pop comes – but as ever, the sheer elegance and sensuality of Melua’s vocals elevate the tracks out of the samey mire that could easily have affected the record. Indeed, the string-laced virtuosity of Gold In Them Hills and Forgetting All My Troubles reach movie-soundtrack levels of sumptuousness.Beauty is an oft underrated quality in an album, and in every sense – musically and vocally - Secret Symphony has beauty in abundance.
Download: Gold In Them Hills / Better Than A Dream / Forgetting All My Troubles
When Katie Melua released her mind-blowing William Orbit collaboration The Flood back in 2010, the prospect of an album eschewing the gentle days of her past for a riotous forty minutes of explorative pop magic seemed all so real. But it never came to pass - The Flood was the exception rather than the rule.
With new single Better Than A Dream, Melua positions herself firmly back within the lulled, beautiful surroundings of acoustic balladry - like hushed ocean waves on a tropical island resort, the pillowed tenderness of the track is interwoven with Melua's knack for keen pop melodies and pretty lyricism: 'I dreamed in colour because I lived in black and white'.
A lullaby-like bossa nova for hazy, thought-filled nights, Better Than A Dream paints an alluring, fantastical portrait of almost tangible other-worlds on the cusp of sleep. And the ever-constant at the heart of the track, the soft sensuality of her vocals, comforting and assuring, delicate and richly textured.
Alongside album opener Gold In Them Hills, Better Than A Dream makes a reassuring opening salvo to Melua's new album, Secret Symphony. Sure, it might lack the unbridled potency of The Flood, but with Melua returned to her usual territory, it sees her more than holding her own.
Better Than A Dream is released on the 12th March, preceded by the album Secret Symphony on the 5th.
