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List Price: $34.99 | | Label: Dramatico
Salesrank: 44247
Released: October 23, 2006 |
| Our Price: $14.49 |
| Used Price: $13.80 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Editorial Review:
Special deluxe two disc (CD + PAL/Region 0 DVD) edition of her sophomore album features three additional audio tracks ('Sometimes When I'm Dreaming', an acoustic version of 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' and the 2006 single 'It's Only Pain') plus a 19 track DVD featuring three promotional videos and a 16 song concert performance recorded live during her 2006 European tour. Universal. 2006.
Description of Piece by Piece:
Piece by Piece--the second album from Georgia-born-chanteuse-cum-naturalised-Brit Katie Melua, and the successor to her multimillion-selling Call Off the Search--begins teasingly with the soft-pedaled "come hither" jazz flirtations of "Shy Boy" and concludes with the whispering philosophical torch-song resignation of "I Do Believe in Love." The two songs represent opposite ends of the emotional spectrum--sultry and kittenish on the one hand, solitary and ruminative on the other--but they also offer clues that the cutesy, crazy, easy listening Melua of Mike Batt's mentorship may be gradually acceding to the full bloom of self-determined musical adulthood. Melua's songs are often the more fretful and organic--the ghostly title track and the lovely "I Cried for You" are especially recommended, while the bluesier numbers (particularly the cover of the classic "Blues in the Night") seem shoehorned in gratuitously to match an anticipated demographic. Batt's contributions are melodic, memorably buoyant, and childlike. The Chinese-flavored "Nine Million Bicycles" and the naggingly catchy "Halfway up the Hindu Kush" are both charming despite their naïve pseudo-ethnicity and currently offer, particularly when compared to something as ponderously wooly as "Spider's Web," a necessary fun counterbalance to Melua's burgeoning compositional skills. At this stage, Piece by Piece fits together nicely like a little jigsaw puzzle. And even if it didn't, Melua would still sound simply ambrosial singing from a washing machine repair manual. --Kevin Maidment
Piece by Piece Reviews:
Piece by Piece 
2007-12-17 - I absolutely love this CD. I put it on "Repeat Disc" and play it over and over again.
"Engineered by Steve Sale..." ...and CLIPPED! 
2006-12-06 -
All songs are excellent!
But,... there are just too many treble boost (aural excitation?) in vocal and mastering. The '80s style reverberation is not colorless. Too aggressive loudness maximization is applied which introducing 3rd harmonics, causing me a hearing fatigue after few hours long play....
Oops... Opened by Sound-Editors and you will observed that a lot of audio portions from many songs are.... CLIPPED! (Most severe in "I cried for you" 2m24s: "How F-R-A-G-I-L-E the world can be...")
Mr. Sale should know what I mean. Hope that a re-mastering edition will be available in future (CD, HDCD, SACD, DVD-Audio...) Then I will buy again. And this is the reason why I write this review! Mr. Batt and Mr. Sale, please!!!
Still highly recommended. Don't wait for the remastering anyway.
And the recordings of additional three tracks in this SPECIAL BONUS EDITION are just great!
Exquisite with Romantic Appeal
2006-11-15 - "If you only knew
you could make your dreams come true"
Eternal love, haunting flute, guitar, piano, sweet sexy lyrics and everything you could wish for in a romantic dream of a collection of songs. Katie Melua's crystalline voice is like the comfort of cold milk from a cold glass after taking a bite of a rich chocolate brownie. Her voice is smooth, dreamy and satisfying.
Nine Million Bicycles has modern and nostalgic notes woven into a sweet fantasy of a song. When she isn't dreaming about enticing shy boys, she is poetic in her social commentary and delves into provocative concepts we face daily, but often fail to address.
I love the hopeless romantic concepts in "Piece by Piece," which is so true about trying to forget someone you love. Katie Melua isn't shy about getting downright sexy in some songs and her honesty is intriguing.
Most of the songs seem to embody a sweet country/folk mood with modern appeal. At times she seems to transcend the limitations of descriptions like adult alternative. She ranges from classical to country (On the Road Again) to jazz (Blue Shoes). She seems as comfortable alone with a guitar (Thank You, Stars) or on a stage with an orchestra. At times you can imagine she has walked out of an old movie and is singing a romantic ballad captured in a moment in time. "I Cried for You" has elements of ecstasy in a story of sadness.
"You're the one I love most of all..."
~The Rebecca Review
