Piece by Piece--the second album from Georgia-born/naturalised Brit chanteuse 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 gratuitously shoehorned in to match an anticipated demographic. Batt's contributions are melodic, memorably buoyant and childlike, the Chinese-flavoured "Nine Million Bicycles" and the naggingly catchy "Halfway Up the Hindu Kush" are both charming despite their naive 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