Worcestershire has something other than sauce as its claim to fame. It also has singer songwriters and one such singer songwriter is Olivia in the Orchard. “The Art of War” would seem to be her debut single and, bizarrely, the review copy came with two versions of the song one of which – the “remix”- was uninspiring to say the least and another version that was actually quite sweet.
“The Art of War” draws from her acoustic roots and, indeed, English folk heritage and, as such, is pretty much standard singer songwriter stuff. Olivia’s voice, however, is a strange thing. Her style is naturalistic to the point of sounding almost unnaturally flawed with the kind of pitching and phrasing errors that you expect of a somewhat inebriated karaoke singer. That said, the song kind of works even if it suddenly fades out as if someone suddenly realised that there was nowhere else to go. Like I said though, Olivia in the Orchard manages to sound sweet and even endearing despite her limitations.
Rather worryingly, there was another, distinctly dire, song called “Mr V.M.” on the review copy that I hope was a demo in search of an autotune. Not the sort of thing that should ever have been let loose near a reviewer…