Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
What makes the screen and what stays on the Cutting Room Floor is often a personal reconciliation after the war on self-censorship. Anything that is created by the artist is subject to greatest critic they know, not those with the thousands of readers and the sharpened visceral quill, not even the audience who wavers between love and over reliant boredom of spirit, but the artist themselves, the one to whom loathing, and adoration comes in thick, quick waves.
Quite often though the war between the personal yin and yang of the artist is one perpetuated by silence, the self-imposing critic in the mind causing the most harmful damage to the psyche, and yet it is one that can be overcome by sticking to the weapon at your side, the one that can silence the inner critic and see the artist blossom, that of the imagined scissors that can edit the voice of doubt with a single dramatic slice.
For any artist to do such a momentous act is one of courage and can lead to the project at hand being one of stirring beauty, one not bound and tethered by regret or neglect of the soul.
For Julia Fordham, courage arguably is not needed, it is the continuation of her story that makes her music so vibrant and fascinating, a beauty of sound that the audience never once fails to notice; and one that is absolute when it comes to the heart’s reaction when the listener takes in the full extent of emotions in her new album, Cutting Room Floor.
From the duet with Simon Petty on the opening and album title track of Cutting Room Floor, and through songs and experiences such as Happier Ending, Red Rectangle, Gold Fades into Blue, Dream Big, Humble Journey, and the reworking of the 1988 classic Invisible War, Julia Fordham once more weaves a spell of lyrical dream and music delight that at once both breaks your heart and lifts you to a different plane of acknowledging harmonious brilliance.
Cutting Room Floor is sensual, physical, it adds depth of colour to the scenes played out, and like the flowering of courage, is a beneficial and inspiring action to see and hear being performed. An album that is staggeringly beautiful throughout, and one that bears witness to the continuing drive of Ms. Fordham’s immense vocal persuasion.
Julia Fordham releases Cutting Room Floor on July 9th via Triple Four Records.
Ian D. Hall