Album Review: Grace – FMA
2 min read
FMA, which is an acronym for ‘Forgive My Attitude’, is the debut album of the Australian singer mononymously known as Grace. This album follows the success of her well received EP Memo which features the Quincy Jones produced single You Don’t Own Me featuring G-Eazy, a cover of Lesley Gore’s hit from 1963. It was listed on Spotify’s Top 10 most viral tracks and it reached number one on Australia’s ARIA chart. The songs of FMA were influenced by the stories of the love hits, misses and mishaps of Grace’s friends. If you’re a fan of the soulful grooves of such greats as Lauren Hill and Amy Winehouse, you will love this album.
There is no doubt that Grace has an amazing voice and there are a number of outstanding songs on this album that showcase it. The opening track of the album, Church On Sunday, is well placed and gets you into the groove from the opening chords on the jazz organ. It’s a great fit for FMA because it’s all about the cheeky topic of girls playing boys. In Hell Of A Girl Grace gives a little lesson in karma; it’s about a boy who cheats on a girl with another girl who in turn cheats on him. You won’t be able to resist singing along to the track Hope You Understand with its upbeat funk-soul feel, and Crazy Over Here will get you up and dancing (or, at the very least, get your foot tapping) with its infectious rhythms.
My only point of concern for this album is that not all the tracks fit in with the expectation conjured up when you read the title FMA. The songs mentioned above are full of sass and certainly give you what you want as a listener, but somewhere in the middle of the album this concept is lost. The tracks How To Love Me, Coffee and New Orleans seem like they would better suit an album titled Sad Songs For A Broken Heart. There is nothing inherently wrong with the songs themselves, in fact the track New Orleans, with its unmistakeable Jeff Buckley influence, is a beautiful ballad. The track Song Cries And Amens doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere all together. The album would benefit from being concise and to the point by removing these meandering songs. Nevertheless, FMA is a solid debut album by Grace.
