The ensuing decades may not always have been easy, but Lea has never abandoned this philosophy, respecting the music and the lyrics and singing them with care and precision. Coward went for truth too. They've seldom, if ever, sounded better than they do on this album, to my knowledge only the third ever Noel Coward songbook by a female vocalist. Few voices age as gracefully as Barbara Lea's. Accompanied by pianist Keith Ingham, with whom she has collaborated successfully before, Lea presents a programme that balances Coward's well-known songs with a few more obscure gems.
Lea opens the verse at a jaunty tempo which initially comes as a surprise.
Mid-way into the verse and in the refrain, as the tone of the lyric becomes more resigned and philosophical, so too does Lea's approach. Two of the rarities deserve special mention. Something Very Strange and Come the Wild Wild Weather , both written in the early 1960s, contain some of Coward's most satisfying lyrics. Works of maturity, Lea sings them with a grace and understanding few singers working today could have mustered. Coward's music was long overdue for a retrospective such as this one, and there isn't a false note in the entire project, which is a triumph of good taste, elegance and, most significantly, understatement.