Little Eve

The first single from Kate Miller-Heidke's debut album, the feisty piano rock song "Words," earned her comparisons to Tori Amos. While fair in relation to that song, the album shows that she has a much wider range than that -- literally, in the case of songs that show off her operatic background with high-octave trilling and warbling as well as perfect enunciation. These elements are fortunately never allowed to grow self-indulgent or detract from the oddball pop songs they gild, instead lending oomph to lyrics that are wistful and sweet. Her voice is put to excellent use singing about the ordinary details of life, like the everyday feeling of wasted moments perfectly captured in "Mama": "When I'm home, all alone/with only the phone/eating crap in the nude." Though half the songs are her own compositions, she also has a talent for taking the words of others and making them sound intensely personal, whether a song is written by her partner, Keir Nuttall (the guitar-and-handclaps ditty "Shoebox"; the yearning love song about private moments "Space They Cannot Touch"; the rock ballad crossed with fingersnapping theatrical number and choral epic "Little Adam"), a cover (Paul Hankinson's quirky cabaret song "Ducks Don't Need Satellites") or adapted from an email forwarded by her mother (the exemplar of disconnected modern life "Don't Let Go"). When she uses her deceptively gigantic voice to sing about these little lives, Miller-Heidke achieves something that goes above and beyond the simple pleasures of pop music -- a genuine profoundness. ~ Jody Macgregor