Today, acclaimed Georgian-British singer-songwriter Katie Melua shared a beguiling new track taken from her forthcoming LP, Album No.8, set for release on BMG on October 16th. ‘Leaving The Mountain’, is one of the album’s most captivating songs. Bewitching in its plaintive nostalgia, and intricately orchestrated by producer Leo Abrahams, it utilizes the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra’s delicate Midas-touches to create a swirling, evocative track worthy of one Melua’s musical inspirations, Terry Callier.
The track was recorded in the modular wood-panelled scoring stage of Tblisi, Georgia’s Lenø Records Studios and its scene-setting woodwinds and harp are immediately transportive; a precise and intoxicating example of just what makes Melua’s new album such a rich sensory experience.
‘Leaving The Mountain’ was inspired by a trip that Melua and her father took to the Caucasus mountains by the Black Sea. “It was a moment of pure contentment,” recalls Melua, “But there’s a necessary sadness to those moments too. We were listening to a playlist of songs mentioned in the (Bob) Dylan book (Chronicles Vol. 1) and were looking at this amazing scenery – and, in all likelihood, we knew that we’d probably never get around to experiencing it together again.”
Katie Melua is one of Britain’s most successful musical artists, with a catalogue that has been certified 56 times platinum around the globe. Originally from Kutaisi, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Melua moved to the UK at the age of eight. Something of a prodigious musical talent she released her debut album Call Off The Search when she was just 19 years old. Since then, Melua has released seven UK Top 10 studio albums: Call Off The Search, Piece By Piece, Pictures, The House, Secret Symphony, Ketevan and, most recently, 2016’s self-produced, critically acclaimed In Winter, which she recorded with the Gori Women’s Choir in her native Georgia. She and Kate Bush are the only two British female artists in UK chart history to reach the Top Ten with seven consecutive albums.
Album No. 8 represents the culmination of a prolonged period of musical rediscovery for the musician. The deeply personal lyrics written by Melua see her attempting to reconcile the knotty complexities of real-life love to its fairytale counterpart. She draws from the vernacular of folk songs to evoke a sense of magic-hour wonder mirrored by string arrangements whose depth and movement evoke Charles Stepney’s work with Rotary Connection and Ramsey Lewis’ Mother Nature’s Son.
