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Imbruglia proves she is more than just a pretty face: Covers album is a quietly confident comeback for the singer

By Adrian Thrills and Tully Potter For The Daily Mail

Published: 19:33 EST, 13 August 2015 | Updated: 20:17 EST, 13 August 2015

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Natalie Imbruglia: Male (Portrait)

Verdict: Quitely confident comeback

Rating:

Taking the male train: Singer Natalie Imbruglia

When you have been away for as long as Natalie Imbruglia, the temptation to come back with a bang must have been strong.

The former soap actress, who became a star thanks to her breakthrough hit Torn, sold millions of albums before disappearing six years ago.

However, this quietly confident return is an understated affair that owes little to the digital fizz of today’s chart music.

A collection of covers, it features the Australian singer’s take on a dozen songs written and originally sung by men.

Imbruglia, 40, hasn’t stood still in her time away. An X Factor judge in her homeland, she also spent two years at a Los Angeles drama school.

She has suffered personal upheaval, too, with the collapse of her four-year marriage to singer Daniel Johns of Australian rock group Silverchair.

It was this that lead to her describing her return to music as ‘cathartic’.

‘I was drawn to songs that dealt with things that were on my mind and I got a lot off my chest,’ she says.

It is easy to see Male as her musical therapy. In turning to the material that helped her through some tough times, she imparts a feminine slant to a well-chosen mix of obscure indie numbers and rock standards.

At first, the spirit is not too far removed from the sweet, wistful tone she summoned up 18 years ago on Torn.

Daft Punk’s Instant Crush, an electronic dance track, is reinvented as a gliding pop song. Damien Rice’s Cannonball, once covered by Little Mix, is now a graceful piano ballad.

Pretty: Imbruglia (pictured in 2013) was once hailed as the sixth most beautiful woman in the world

Imbruglia’s desire to reinterpret songs with a place in her heart leads to some intriguing choices.

She immerses herself in Australian singer Josh Pyke’s acoustic anthem The Summer before turning to the warm Americana of Sam Beam’s Naked As We Came and Death Cab For Cutie’s morbid I Will Follow You Into The Dark.

Heartbreak, unsurprisingly, is also on the agenda. Zac Brown’s weepy country ballad Goodbye In His Eyes finds her singing of a broken romance: ‘He found what he’d been looking for, and I knew it wasn’t me.’

Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart pairs her plaintive voice with a solitary bass guitar.

The mood is not wholly downbeat. The Cure’s Friday I’m In Love becomes a bluegrass hoedown, complete with mandolin and clapping, and Pete Townshend’s solo single Let My Love Open The Door is bright and breezy. Her acoustic take on Tom Petty’s The Waiting is similarly upbeat.

Imbruglia is not the first woman to deliver an album of songs written by men. Tori Amos did it with Strange Little Girls in 2001 and Rumer sidestepped writers’ block with 2012’s Boys Don’t Cry.

Male, however, is a solid move for a talented singer whose last album of original material, Come To Life, flopped so badly when it came out in Australia in 2009 that her UK record label did not even take the trouble to release it here.

When the winsome Imbruglia was at her commercial peak in the Noughties, she was hailed as the sixth most beautiful woman in the world by fashion experts.

This subtle but sincere return proves she is more than just a pretty face.

Natalie Imbruglia chats about first album in four years, Male

JULIO BASHMORE

Knockin’ Boots (Broadwalk)

Rating:

Bristol DJ Matt Walker — aka Julio Bashmore — sticks to house music essentials on this high-octane debut.

Rather than reinvent himself as a singer- songwriter, he concentrates on rhythm as he veers from the modern disco of Holding On to the jazz-funk of the title track.

With teenage soul diva J’Danna the pick of some talented guest vocalists, Knockin’ Boots strikes a perfect balance between pop and dance.

THE STRYPES

Little Victories (Virgin EMI)

Rating:

The mohair suits and mop-tops imply an affinity with Sixties beat, but these Irish teens augment any retro leanings with a raw power that owes as much to the Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian.

Guitarist Josh McClorey played with Paul Weller, and he doffs his cap on the Jam-like Cruel Brunette.

The Strypes are still young enough to find their own voice.

BACH

Piano Music (Sony 88875053302)

Rating:

The best CD so far from Viennese pianist Rudolf Buchbinder’s ongoing series for Sony.

His third choice is the third of the six English Suites, earliest of Bach’s keyboard suites and not at all English.

Opening with the First Partita and continuing with the Second, Buchbinder’s fingers prance along merrily in the fast movements, while the slower ones are nicely ‘sung’.