Meine Zarten Pfoten
German star Ada has returned with her second album Meine zarten Pfoten (My Tender Paws), the follow up to her debut Blondie.
Whilst on the surface this is electro, at its heart this is so much more. It’s not overly complicated or noteworthy in terms of style, but the emotion on haunting opener “Faith” (a Luscious Jackson cover) shows that Ada is a great talent.
It should be noted early on that this is a largely instrumental electronic album, with very few songs including lyrics or “proper” vocals.
Really, it’s not missed, because the music has a lot of depth. It takes a good songwriter to get across an emotion lyrically, but it takes a truly great one to do it just through music.
Whilst each track differs enough to be moderately exciting, some of the tracks get a bit too repetitive on their own.
Some of them, such as ‘Likely’, are warm, charming acoustic pieces that are suited to just lying back and listening to the music. This isn’t electro in the club sense, rather a more mature sound that more mainstream acts in the genre fail to show.
In an age where holding an audiences’ attention can be difficult, a largely instrumental album is ambitious, but done well here.
There are some misses, though. ‘The Jazz Singer’ (re-imagined by Ada) is one of the album’s weakest tracks. ‘Happy Birthday’ is a bit of a mess, in all honesty, going on far too long.
My Tender Paws doesn’t end particularly strongly, coming off as a decent album, but nothing really exceptional. The emotion and tenderness (pun intended) is fantastic, but some of the songs seem like a waste of Ada’s obvious talent.
Female First - Alistair McGeorge