Release Date: 27 August 2012
Signed to a major label as a teenager, Tanita Tikaram's debut album 'Ancient Heart' released in 1988 sold over five million copies and established her as a major worldwide artist. Tikaram was defined by her unique voice and her direct and haunting self-penned songs such as 'Twist In My Sobriety' and 'Good Tradition', folk pop songs written as an escape from her studies. This British voice defined a generation and now she is returning with arguably the best album she has written in 20 years. After 'Ancient Heart', she built a formidable, widely respected body of work that is reminiscent of Laura Marling, Adele, and Gillian Welch among others. "I was influenced and formed by old records from classic singers like Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald, and those sounds have become part of music again.” You know what they say: good things take a little longer. It's been seven years since 'Sentimental', Tanita Tikaram's sixth and most recent album. Now, at last, comes 'Can't Go Back', her most rewarding album yet. She was inspired by her new found love of Americana, by the union of country and soul by Motown and Chess, and by singers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Dusty Springfield, Don Williams, Paul Simon and the long-lost Marie Knight, Tanita went straight to the heart of what moved her heart. Guesting musicians include Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann, Grant Lee Phillips, Nina Nastasia), keyboardist Keefus Ciancia (B.B. King, T.Bone Burnett, Elton John, Everlast), Ray LaMontagne's drummer Jay Bellerose and guitarist Mark Creswell, lovingly crafted 'Cant go Back' in the Sound Factory Los Angeles. It proved to be a musical coming home for Munster-born, Basingstoke-raised daughter of Fijian/Malaysian parents. The finished result is a warm, uplifting convergence of Tanita's fabulously sensual voice and an often raggedy sound, full of joyous clatter courtesy of Bellerose's World War II-era wooden drums. And, perhaps unusually for a Tanita Tikaram record, 'Can't Go Back' is mostly happy."It is, but it's full of sweet melancholy too," she purrs. "There's sex, there's nostalgia and there's freedom. The song, 'Dust On My Shoes', is all about how you can be free from people's conceptions of you, if you want and how, while I don't have faith, I do believe and I do strive to have an open mind. More than any other, that song encapsulates me." "'Can't Go Back' is Tanita Tikaram at her peak; "I'd like it to be successful," she explains. "And there's no shame in that. I'd like people to be listening to it in a decade's time, but most of all I'd like to have made an album people love. That's all, really.”
Disc 1 All Things To You Dust On My Shoes Make The Day Rock & Roll Science Keep It Real Can't Go Back Heavy Pressure One Kiss If The World Should Want For Love
Disc 2 - Bonus Audio Tracks Twist In My Sobriety (Acoustic Version)