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The Beauty Room

The Beauty Room

The Beauty Room came about through continued collaboration, with Kirk Degiorgio sending Jinadu sketches of songs with increasingly unusual progressions. Jinadu worked his magic and returned them enhanced with catchy melodies, hooks galore and layers of rich harmonies.

The Beauty Room marks a notable stylistic shift for both Jinadu and Degiorgio. A debut single a deft adaptation of Jan Hammers classic Don’t You Know - was recently released on Parlophone's Vanity Projects offshoot and while it may have been a typically teasing Degiorgio hors d’oeuvre, its in the shape of a self titled album that the Beauty Room present their full, lavish feast.

Opener Soul Horizon sets the tone; its lulling acoustic guitar intro presaging a phalanx of Jinadu harmonies which usher in a melodic reverie of a song that could be a gently billowing outtake from the first Crosby Stills and Nash album. It’s a languorous intoxication that continues as the album gathers its own mellow pace. Everywhere, Jinadus harmonies weave, glide and plunge around the rippling guitars of (fellow Peacefrog artist) Ian O'Brien, marble smooth keyboards courtesy of Thomas O'Grady, Chris Whitten's crisp but discretely funky drums and Degiorgio's babbling electronic undercurrents.

Holding On is a deft, soulful Fender Rhodes ballad, with a chorus that sticks like superglue; The Weight Of The World nods to The Beach Boys at their most transcendent, while Shades Of Yesterday, with Degiorgio adroitly taking care of vocal duties, is an intimate, hypnotic confessional, with a redemptive, string-caressed refrain. Fortress, meanwhile, could very nearly be a Coldplay ballad albeit it a spectacularly sensitive one.

There’s an undeniable sense of timeless urban sophistication at play here. Indeed, this album most readily brings to mind those high priests of the cerebral groove, Steely Dan. What The Beauty Room achieve here is a similar blend of sharp-creased strut and spiritual meditation, all of it laced with plenty of that most essential yet indefinable alchemical element, soul.