Songs for You, Truths for Me

James Morrison's second album is worthy of its predecessor

It has been two long years of waiting since James Morrison's debut album Undiscovered was released and the young artist has been far from wasting time during the period. Whenever he had some free time in his tight tour schedule he wrote new songs. Today twelve new compositions have made it to the singer's sophomore effort that got called Songs For You, Truths For Me. As before Morrison's excellent voice plays the central role on the record for it is able to sound both soft and sensual and impressively powerful and heartfelt. Devoted mainly to relationship and its ending the work is an example of a great romantic pop music with some soul elements offering several songs that easily pretend to become hits. Compared to the debut album there are more energetic mid-tempo tracks on Songs For You, Truths For Me which leave more space for James to apply his brilliant vocal skills and express all the emotions he wants. Varied and melodious, James Morrison's second album has proved quite worthy of its predecessor.

A vivid, emotional and soulful Songs For You, Truths For Me

With its entire diversity album Songs For You, Truths For Me is very vivid, emotional and soulful. The album opens with an incendiary composition The Only Night, a mid-tempo optimistic tune refined with splendid tubes and no less contagious piano. Song Save Yourself starts as a lyrical ballad full of sadness and then turns into a solemn anthem with a wonderfully smart text about working on oneself to save the relationship. A sentimental single You Make It Real pleases both with a beautiful memorable melody and the artist's sincere singing while a hit composition Please Don't Stop The Rain will surely become one of your favorite moments on the record for here James demonstrates his best vocals filling each line with passion and a marvelous rhythm makes a most romantic attitude. One of the most interesting tracks is Broken Strings, a collaboration with Nelly Furtado, a mid-tempo duet telling of a hard breakup. A sensual ballad Once When I Was Little describes the difference between childhood and adult life and a blues song If You Don't Wanna Love Me is another example of what James-vocalist is able to do for here his performance is really breathtaking. Undoubtedly the most beautiful and complicated tune is on Dream On Hayley, it is underlined with an amazing guitar and the tubes here, and the album closer is a light, almost fully acoustic ballad Love Is Hard filled with melancholy and light sadness.

Contrasts of tough rock compositions and soft soul ballads

At his age of 24 James Morrison is probably one of the best English pop performers which is why he is placed in one list along with James Blunt and Daniel Powter. Yet his music is quite different from the others for the influence of such artists as Elton John, Stevie Wonder and John Mayer is obviously traced in it. Combining successfully rock, soul and pop styles in his creations the artist easily takes the highest possible notes. On Songs For You, Truths For Me his progress as an artist is but evident for his voice range has become even wider and the sounding of each separate track has enriched. The contrasts of tough rock compositions and soft soul ballads make the album especially interesting the effect being achieved exclusively by means of James' vocals. Sometimes his voice is so fragile that seems to break in a second and just some minutes later it offers power and depth that nobody could have imagined to be there. Calm and worrisome at the same time Songs For You, Truths For Me has certainly become a big step forward for Morrison and we can be pretty sure that he will give us a lot of more so wonderfully beautiful, contagious and warm songs.