Another day, another jiffy bag. This particular one contained an album by a Glasgow singer songwriter going by the name of Chiara Berardelli. Such an occurrence is hardly unusual but this time it turned out to be a reason for celebration for “Don’t Be So Lovely” more than makes the grade.
For a start, this is a well performed and a well produced (by Mark Freegard) album that shows that there is still something to be gained musically and spiritually by reflecting on loves lost, found and lessons learned along the way. Piano led – for that is Ms Berardelli’s weapon of choice – and all the better for it in these days of guitar pop, she sings, in “Dreaming of America”, of ambitions lost in the urban jungle with each touch of the ivories suggesting the emptiness of life away from friends and family. She then wears her heart on her sleeve in an immaculately constructed and convincingly commercial “Tough Skin” and even emulates Nerina Pallot on “Home”. Further proof of the maturity of her musical abilities and her mastery of the ballad comes in the sentimental “Hot Air Balloon” featuring a melody line that could have come from the pen of Dave Grusin. The most affecting song on the album, however, was the last one – “Jigsaw”. As a song, it is hardly radical but there is an uncommon attention to detail right down to the percussion being in exactly the right place to accent her voice.
As a further plus point, Ms Berardelli shows little of the Kate Nash style cuteness that afflicts so many of her commercially successful contemporaries and manages, for want of a better phrase, to “keep it real”. While she doesn’t display the lyrical diversity of Sofia Talvik or the sheer charm of Joanna Chapman-Smith, she nonetheless stamps her personality and her humanity on the songs on this album and I, for one, would like to see Ms Berardelli do well with this one. I’ll therefore end this review with a quote the lyrics in one of her songs – “… the missing piece in my jigsaw - you’ve been so hard to find”. That’s how I feel about this album.