With her fourth album, Falling Forward, Julia Fordham continues to provide signs of intelligent life in the easy-listening universe. An elegantly emotive singer with a wide range that encompasses both a resonant bottom and a fluttery top, Fordham writes in the tradition of Joni Mitchell, penning cerebral folk-pop songs that pack a visceral punch. Like Mitchell, too, the British singer has a flair for moody jazz underpinnings that enhance her rich capacity for expression.

It seems fitting, then, that Falling Forward is co-produced by Larry Klein, Mitchell's husband and frequent musical collaborator. Working alongside Fordham, Klein crafts spacious, atmospheric arrangements that bring her delicate melodies and subtle, insinuating pathos to the fore.

Musically, what rescues the album's airy ballads from tedium is the earthy sensuality that Fordham and Klein, with the aid of some excellent supporting musicians, inject into each track. On the album's title song, a wistfully ambivalent ode to an aloof lover, flourishes of nylon-string guitar (courtesy of Dominic Miller) dance enticingly around the verses, then furnish a vibrantly beautiful flow under the chorus. "I Can't Help Myself" offers a gently insistent bass line and a seductive hip-hop beat, while on the jazz-infused "Threadbare," Klein's peevish piano chords reflect Fordham's confusion and longing as she sings: "I am crushed by your indifference.... If I knew then what I know now/I would have saved my words somehow."

Ultimately, of course, it's Fordham's singing that ensures her emotional authority. She's especially good at layering vocal lines; whether overdubbing her own voice or working with equally supple backup singers, she creates breezy harmonies that shimmer with color and light. On two songs, "Hope, Prayer and Time" and "River," Fordham uses gospel-style choral patterns; "River" finds her fronting the L.A. Mass Choir with the perfect combination of self-possession and respect.

But Fordham's most moving performance on Falling Forward is a sparse solo turn: On "Honeymoon," another cry of romantic disillusionment, her lone voice hovers over a bleak piano backdrop, then pierces through a sudden, mournful wash of strings. "I'm here," she asserts – and for all the ethereal touches in her songs, Fordham makes her alluring presence strongly felt. (RS 691)

ELYSA GARDNER