Donna Fullman
Album: Inner World
Label: Lyrically Speaking
Tracks: 11
Website: https://www.donnafullman.com

I was really pleased to have reviewed an EP, "Happiness + Victory", from Brighton based Donna Fullman, a couple of years back. Ultimately it was a mixed experience. There was no doubting the quality of performance and voice, but at five tracks long, it was definitely too short, so having a full blown album set the old pulse racing.

I'm old enough to remember Fleetwood Mac's, Christine McVie when she got hold of a song, she had a voice that's capable of bringing not just a feeling to the words, but also a real sense of gravitas. She could project the importance of the song and its contents so you know it mattered so you'ld better listen. Whilst vocally Christine and Donna sound different, they do carry a shared authority to their sound.

"Inner World" may be considered to have an ethereal context to it, but actually does line its self up to your psyche. That's not to say this is an inward looking album, far from it. Fullman has a knack of drawing up images from the dreamscape, that compliment the sophisticated pop sound she builds her vocals against.

Strangely there were times when I found myself thinking of "Ghost Riders In The Sky", again not as a direct comparison, more as a fleeting thought when one of Fullman's songs provided a feeling of wide open spaces, but at the same time implied all wasn't necessarily right with the world. Then there's the piano, it's use and tone add oodles to the songs. It provides such a solid frame work.

It's funny, there's very few fireworks on "Inner World", this is not an album of glitzy lights and rockets, more like thunderstorm, capturing the majesty of nature in its most dark form with the surplus electricity streaking across the sky in unpredictable forks and that serves it so well. A grand album and no mistake.

Neil King