I’m usually wary when a ‘new’ artist is compared to an icon of the business from an earlier age; after all it’s something I do all too often myself.
Moreover, a comparison with Enya would be viewed with suspicion no matter who the artist is. As it happens it’s a spot-on observation.
Maliika, isn’t new to the business, I know she’s released songs into the public domain in the past, but she’s new to me and to NMC. She isn’t very evident on the social media scene but I suspect she’s from Stockholm and I heard she runs an ice cream parlour at the seaside south of the capital. And she makes it herself! I’ll have a 99 Cornet please.
She seems to be some sort of new-ager, creating her songs in a house in a forest with meadows, open fields and the sea close at hand. Exactly the view I have out of my window. Not. (More like a landscape from an L S Lowry painting).
And there seems to be quite a few of these nature-inspired female singer-songwriters in that area, too.
Writing a song is like painting in Maliika’s universe, the words and music replicating the flow of oil or water paints onto the canvas. And that’s precisely what this song does, it flows. “Go with the flow” she sings and this one don’t need no Orinoco.
Vocally, she pitches somewhere between Enya and Mary Hopkin, for those old enough to remember the 19-year Welsh songstress who almost won Eurovision all those years ago (and who subsequently married Bowie’s producer Tony Visconti).
That’s class.
The only concern I have if that’s the right word is an iffy synth bridge which turns up on a couple of occasions. It makes it sound like it was created in the bedroom. But that is vastly outweighed by the beauty of her voice and skillfully recorded harmonies.
So don’t ebb, just flow and go listen…
‘Flow’ is out now on the Comedia label.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaliikaArtist
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maliikaartist/
