Lovers in the City

The definitive dark mood spinner, Tanita Tikaram succeeds where all the clones fail.

Blessed with a rich, smoky, resonating voice, Tikaram doesn't need all the production support to make the material work. She can sing with a mellow bongo beat and it's still hypnotic -- without being melodramatic.

Thanks to the pinpoint production skills of Tikaram herself and Thomas Newman, the instrumentation takes a back seat to the voice, which has the strength and subtlety normally associated with jazz artists.

The other asset that pushes her head and shoulders above the rest of the female vocalist horde is her melodic sensibility. Using her voice as a pointer, her songs rise and fall inside her with the melodic ease of a drunken chanteuse.

Smoky, dark and ethereal, Lovers in the City will hang in the air intangibly like a fine perfume -- classy, subtle and decidedly understated.