On her own unusually amusing website, Nerina Pallot describes herself as a “melancholy Englishwoman, prone to self-deprecation and self- aggrandisement in equal measures”. She has, among many other strengths, an astute understanding of what makes Fires, her second album, such a treasure. While Pallot is commendably willing to have a lash at the big themes — life, time, death, desire, meaning; all the greats — she invests her passionate musings with a twinkling wit that redeems her songs just the right side of melodrama.

The single and opening track, an up- beat, old-school protest song called Everybody’s Gone to War, is a rousing and articulate introduction, but it is not indicative of Pallot at her best. The finest moments on Fires — the ballads Idaho, Damascus and Mr King — are those that make a virtue of Pallot’s intricate piano arrangements, astonishingly versatile voice and weirdly affecting words. The devalued currency of the rock lyric is clearly treasured by Pallot, and she displays an Elliott Smith- style knack for alchemising half- focused images into phrases that haunt as long as her opulent tunes echo in the head.

Andrew Mueller

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