You gotta have Faith
Judging by her recent ill-fated appearance on the BBC’s Diamond Jubilee coverage, British singer-songwriter and sometime actor Paloma Faith may not be in a rush to add ‘TV presenter’ to her resume.
Faith and host Fearne Cotton appeared in one of the Jubilee’s odder segments, a two-minute home shopping-esque spot in which they presented some of the tacky knock-off products bearing the Queen’s image.
“If you’ve eaten too much, you can just vomit into a Jubilee sickbag,” Faith trilled happily as she presented the tat to an audience of millions who were not amused, complaining in their thousands to the BBC about the flippant coverage.
“Everywhere I go they throw tomatoes,” Faith joked down the line from her London home.
“The BBC haven’t really said anything about it, and it was all their idea. I thought it was quite funny — clearly not everyone did.”
It’s but a small sour tinge to what’s been an incredible few weeks for Faith: her first album, 2009’s underrated Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful?, was the very definition of a slow burner, spending two years in the UK charts without ever getting higher than number nine.
But earlier in June, she crashed in at number two (second only to the official Diamond Jubilee album – pass that Jubilee sick bag) with its follow-up, Fall To Grace.
“I decided to focus on being honest and more vulnerable with this album,” she said.
“It was really refreshing to just work with [producer] Nellee Hooper, because I was able to create one consistent sonnet. If anything, it was a much more relaxed approach than the first time.
“Because I’d garnered a certain level of success with the first album, I was left to my own devices a lot more this time around.”
Lead single Picking Up The Pieces sets the album’s lovelorn tone, and comes complete with a gorgeously cinematic video shot on location in an English country manor. Faith and her striking male love interest spend much of their camera time staring meaningfully into the middle distance.
“The whole album is an homage to cinema. I wanted it to sound like a film soundtrack for my own life. My idea is that all the videos be quite filmic, and all part of the one story. The guy who’s in that video will be in all of them.”
Faith revealed that album highlights 30 Minute Love Affair and Just Be were among the contenders for upcoming singles, but smack bang in the midst of all these string-drenched, post-Adele ballads is possibly the most surefire pop hit Faith’s yet delivered.
A little bit disco, a little bit new wave and very Blondie, Blood Sweat & Tears is the album’s standout to our ears.
“Ha, you’re definitely writing for a gay paper, aren’t you? That’s what I said when I’d written it: ‘it’s a gay anthem!’ I love it. I guess it’ll have to be a single then, it’d be unjust not to.”
INFO: Fall To Grace (Sony) out now.
