If you ever meet Carina Round you’ll be struck by her beauty, and mesmerised as she looks straight into your eyes. Watch a live performance by her and you’ll be taken to another place by her passion, expression and skill. In summary, she connects, and in a way few artists can. So there’s a strong of element of irony in the title of an album that has the power to bury itself deep inside your soul. And it’s been a tough challenge to meet, and perhaps beat, the quality of her debut mini-album, THE FIRST BLOOD MYSTERY. It garnered some of the best critical acclaim I can remember in its year of release, and rightly so.

THE DISCONNECTION has taken well over a year to complete; a year to experience more life, more fear, more joy, more tears, more writing. In fact, the album may well serve as a chronicle of feelings and emotions in a period that’s thrown a few curve balls, and during which Round has been ‘finding herself’. The scene is set with jagged, clattering drum beats on opening track, Shoot. Round proclaims, “Alone on the edge of something new…. Come kiss me so that I can read your lips” and you believe every word and emotional nuance as her incredible voice grips every message and feeling like a vice. It’s a tough song, with a hint of melody and a rocky instrumental arrangement that is perfectly matched to the sentiments expressed.

Into My Blood ups the stakes even further with a stronger melody and a stunning vocal performance; one moment pleading, the next demanding… A remarkable track accompanied by another set of accessible and heartfelt lyrics: “I wait all my life, just for the rush, the passing of fire, into my blood…” Then the pace and mood mellows with Lacuna that sports a strong jazz/blues vibe, innovative and quite startling instrumental passages, and arguably the strongest melody yet. Paris repeats the treatment in a paean to dreams of being somewhere else physically, mentally and emotionally. Beautiful.

The city of Paris must represent something special for Round as she sings about leaning on a ‘windowsill in Paris, hanging over gare du nord…‘ and the emotions experienced there: “I’m not looking for answers at a time like this, I can feel the moment for once, let it come, oh god, let it come.” It’s another stunning, soul-searching song. Round is a deeply sensuous singer/songwriter and if proof were needed Motel 74 nails it. “I smoked his cigarette, cause his lips had touched it, and I found out soon, he sure know how to use a hotel room.” And “You stood there restless, WAITING FOR ME, body humming with, colours I have never seen.” I can feel the excitement, the expectation, and the sensuality as Round tells the story, as if talking to a friend about the experience. AND WHEN ROUND SPEAKS, YOU LISTEN.

This album confirms Carina Round as the UK’s leading female singer/songwriter, and by a tangible margin. The album’s greater diversity of pace and mood, melodic strnegths, and inventive arrangements combine to make this a better album than her last (if that were possible…). She’s the complete artist in the vein of USA’s fabulous Ani DiFranco, and with the same uncompromising belief in what she does, and how she does it. I can’t wait to see her perform again, but for now this album will keep me going very nicely. And if this doesn’t get a Mercury Music Prize short-listing next year, there really is no justice. Remarkable and essential.

5/5