Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful

Editors’ Notes That Paloma Faith has a background in theater and burlesque is no surprise—the songs on her debut are brash and dramatic, seductively beckoning with a crushed-velvet tableaux of bruised hearts and broken promises. Though Faith trades in the stylized R&B popularized by compatriots like Amy Winehouse and Duffy, her take is more flamboyant and eccentric. She draws as much from Baz Luhrmann’s widescreen fantasias in the love-gone-wrong song “New York” as she does from sirens of yore.