Rox

Released by Rough Trade in 2010, Memoirs includes My Baby Left Me, I Don’t Believe, No Going Back and Rocksteady. The album moves between different rhythmic feels rather than treating one retro-soul arrangement as a complete identity. The reggae inflection of Rocksteady and the more restrained Sad Eyes give the singing substantially different emotional environments.

Tataei’s early musical background included church singing and the National Youth Music Theatre. In her account of that period, the church supplied a foundation in vocal technique while theatre provided the practical experience of performing with other young people. The connection is audible in a delivery that can make an entrance decisively, then adjust the scale of the next phrase.

The album’s credits include Tataei as a writer as well as a vocalist, with production work from Al Shux and Commissioner Gordon helping establish the recording world around her. That distinction matters for an artist whose voice can otherwise become the whole introduction. The songs give different situations and musical decisions to the performer: a firmly stated refusal, a lighter rhythmic movement or a more exposed melodic line. Memoirs is a substantial first statement without needing an invented succession of follow-up albums to justify it. The interest is in the actual sequence and the different kinds of space it gives the voice. A busy arrangement can make the singing seem more defiant, while a quieter setting lets the grain of a phrase carry the tension on its own.