It’s hard to fall for a new artist whose break came courtesy of that bastion of cutting-edge music programming, Later With Jools Holland. But Ala.Ni is a beguiling singer capable of torching lazy assumptions. Somewhere between Judy Garland and Julee Cruise, she is a west London-born, Paris-based former session singer of Grenadian extraction who harks back to a time when songbirds glided on gentle orchestral breezes. This assured debut is largely about a doomed love affair, a curio you didn’t know you needed until it arrives. Innocence pervades songs such as Cherry Blossom, but Roses & Wine finds Ala.Ni aghast when her lover returns to his wife, while Darkness at Noon is a postmortem that’s more thorn than rose.
