Florence Rawlings – A Fool In Love

Your initial reaction to finding out about Florence Rawlings' record will be heavily affected by what you think of Mike Batt. Rawlings is, you see, the latest "discovery" made by the experienced songwriter and producer, famed for his previous unearthing of Katie Melua a few years back and, in the early 70s, The Wombles. Unhappily, Rawlings is more in the former mold than in the latter. I use the word "mold" quite specifically because like Katie Melua often has, Rawlings sounds on A Fool in Love like a construction, a vessel for Batt himself. As opposed to the light jazz and blues of Melua's releases, the mode Batt has moved into on this record is, ostensibly, soul. The trouble is that for all the precisely calculated instrumentation and Rawlings' presentable if slightly overwrought voice, this attempt at soul is about as soulless as they come. From the beginning to the end, this album feels cynical and manufactured, too pristine and sterile to convey the emotion Rawlings' melisma is probably meant to. Unsurprisingly there are some covers in evidence, including one of Chuck Berry's "Can't Catch Me" and another of Ike & Tina Turner's "A Fool in Love", the album's title track. These covers reinforce the fact that Rawlings' music is completely backwards-looking - Batt and Rawlings want to capture an earlier time for us, and package it. The trouble is that the era in question stands up perfectly well already, and doesn't need a cynical retread.A Fool in Love is just too vacuously assembled to come off. Everything it attempts has been carried off more successfully many times before, mostly at leas thirty-odd years ago. The crucial factor for many though, will be Rawlings' voice, which is one of those put-on, syrupy, OTT ones which you either love or despise.