Review: Laura Mvula is back on top with joyous new album Pink Noise

: by Joe Sharratt; in Reviews; on 08 July 2021

Birmingham-born singer, songwriter and composer Laura Mvula has endured a particularly difficult few years. It’s not just the constraints and strains of lockdown that we’ve all endured either. After her first two albums – 2013’s Sing To The Moon and The Dreaming Room in 2016 – were both Mercury nominated, her debut winning two MOBO Awards and the followup an Ivor Novello Award, Mvula was unceremoniously dropped by Sony from her five-album deal. Incredibly, she only found out the news by email.

If that wasn’t enough to contend with, Mvula has also spoken about the damage anxiety and panic attacks have wreaked in her life, including their contribution to the breakdown of her marriage. The combination of these struggles, professionally and personally, would have flattened a fair share of artists. So does Pink Noise, Mvula’s new and third album and her first in five years, mark a comeback?

Well, it’s clear within the first few seconds of album opener Safe Passage, Pink Noise has taken Mvula in a different direction to her first two albums. Where those early works mixed soul, pop, and on The Dreaming Room elements of disco, her new album has a distinctly 80s feel to it. Conditional is a strutting, preening, monster that embodies this new spirit perfectly, while Got Me is so authentic it feels like an 80s cover, with a video to match.

Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil pops up on What Matters, a curious duet which works against all the odds, while Church Girl is unapologetically big on the synthesizers. Pink Noise then – named for the frequency of sound that sits below the harsher white noise – isn’t just a sparkling return to the limelight, it’s the sound of Mvula enjoying herself, and after a difficult few years, it’s delightful to hear. The result is a sassy, shimmering love letter to a golden age of pop music.

Pink Noise tracklist: