At first listen, it would be natural to discount Rumer as one of those gossamer-voiced muzak merchants who come around on Jools Holland just in time for Christmas. The music-buying public's appetite for fresh vintage sounds shows no sign of slowing, as the new Duffy album attests. You might assume Rumer's song, "Aretha" – a gentle hymn to the power of Franklin – constitutes an elegant compounding of this popular interest.
It follows, too, that a new revival is probably just around the corner. Might it be auteurist pop in the vein of Burt Bacharach or the more elegant sounds of the early 1970s, like Carole King? Both names are often invoked in discussions of Rumer, the songwriter born Sarah Joyce 31 years ago, and renamed in honour of children's author Rumer Godden. Her debut album, Seasons of My Soul, skilfully apes the pensive breeziness of that era. Even John Prescott is a fan.
Rumer has been trying to reach the sunny uplands of a music career for a decade, as Stereo Venus, Sarah Joyce, Rumer and the Denials, and as part of indie band La Honda. It seems that some of Seasons's songs have been around nearly as long. But their definitive, lush, classic treatment came as a result of meeting Steve Brown, best known as Glenn Ponder, the leader of Alan Partridge's house band on Knowing Me, Knowing You, but also a TV composer of note.
Brown has described Seasons of My Soul as "a kind of emotional Trojan horse" and he is right. The glide and tinkle of the schmaltzier numbers here, like "Slow", a single, often obscure the complexity of feeling lurking in Rumer's songs.
"Take Me as I Am" pleads for unconditional love, like Karen Carpenter singing the Smiths. "Is there a place where all that I've lost will be returned to me?" she wonders. "Don't tell me it's all right/ It'll never be all right." "Aretha", meanwhile, is not just another invocation of a soul great. It's a song about a misfit whose weeping, inattentive mother "is always fighting something in her mind/That sounds like breaking glass".
There is no need to have lived a tragic life to pen emotionally resonant songs – that takes acuity and talent, of which there is a great deal here. But as with Carpenter, a little biography goes a long way with Rumer. Born in an idyllic expat bubble in Pakistan, Rumer underwent multiple dislocations thanks to the family's move back to England, her parents' divorce, and the discovery that the family's cook in Pakistan was her biological father. She nursed her mother until her death from cancer, and, according to their Myspace page, left La Honda after an onstage fracas with her ex, the band's heavy-drinking drummer, in which shoes were thrown.
Seasons is not all wintry sorrow. Just listen to the predatory come-hither that is "Come to Me High", which proves Rumer can be as ripe as she is wistful. Throughout, these 11 songs give the impression of being sweet nothings. They are, instead, substantial and salty with tears.
