Katie Melua, “Love & Money.”

Singer-songwriter Katie Melua was coming to terms with a divorce on 2020’s Album No. 8. Her latest long-player, Love & Money, finds her in a completely different place. Now with a new partner and a newborn son (she was pregnant when making the album), she’s found a new contentedness that’s reflected in these breezy Laurel Canyon folk songs.

Love & Money is her ninth album. Each of the first eight reached the top 10 in the U.K. albums chart; something accomplished by just two female British artists—Kate Bush (12 times) and Melua. This album differs from her past work, though. There’s less complexity in the final product. The arrangements (the album was again produced by long-time collaborator Leo Abrahams, who’s worked with Brian Eno and Regina Spektor) are less tightly wound.

There’s fewer jazzy intonations; there are no songs like “Voices in the Night” or “Maybe I Dreamt It.” She’s said she lightened her approach to music-making for this album to reflect where she was in life, underneath a “blue sky.” That’s a thematic element to which she keeps returning in several of the songs.

Instead, this music and Melua’s singing provides plenty of breathing room and little drama. Call it easy listening, or maybe easy living. The songs are about unhurriedly falling in love, finding joy in everyday things, being secure with who she is and letting life come at her as it does.

Katie Melua spells out the framework with new single “Quiet Moves,” a mid-tempo bop (and the most poppy track on the album) about realizing she was falling in love with her partner, whom she’s identified as “Ollie,” after watching his carefree dance moves. Twinkling piano notes and hazy guitar lines dance around the urgent drumming.

“Growing up in England made you who you are,” the Georgia (Europe)-born Melua sings.

Much of the rest of the album is even mellower, shifting focus to her words and singing ability.

“It’s good to let a little peace inside you/ Otherwise the flame will freeze inside you,” she sings on “14 Windows.” Stripped of context, this could have been about a breakup and on the 2020 album. But here she sings from a hopeful place rather than a weary and sad one. The song is drenched in organ reverb and synths, as if recently discovered in a time capsule from the late ’70s or early ’80s.

Over a shuffling beat, jazzy guitar noodling and light piano riffs, Melua paints a pictures of a perfect summer day on “Lie in the Heat,” singing “the sun and our spirits are shining away, giving us a beautiful day.” It’s easy to picture her as Snow White, prancing along a stream in a forest clearing. Single “Those Sweet Days” presents a similar picture, if more domesticated. This one is built atop gentle piano, vocal harmonies and a waltz-like drumbeat. This song is about sitting back and taking time to do nothing.

The middle of the album offers some happy-in-love tunes. “Darling Star” could be either about her partner or her newborn son. “If you could only see the way your love changed my life/ And how you keep the whole world still,” she sings, holding the last high note for dramatic effect. “Love is easy with you.”

“First Date,” which has Melua channeling Regina Spektor (“He said, ‘Everyone is getting married’/ I said, ‘Well don’t let that force the matter'”) is a lot less ambiguous.

“Pick Me Up,” the most sonically dense song on the album (it’s got a little bit of everything that Love & Money offers) continues the album’s trend of referencing blue sky imagery. The most dramatic song here is the title track, which closes the album. It seems like an autobiographical story of growing up in a politically unstable Georgia, referencing Kutaisi, the town where Melua was born, and a time when her father seemed to be nervous about something before deciding “it’s a false alarm.” It’s tinged with somber fiddle-playing, giving it a country music feeling.

Album opener “Golden Record” is about finding a balance between Melua’s work-oriented personality and her place as a woman in the music industry, and the life she’d been missing out on— stability, a child, friends with similar goals and life events. “What are you afraid of now/ Worried you might be finally happy?” she asks herself.

“Before I knew it, the years had flown and I was 36, newly divorced, still pedaling like mad with music, while around me, friends were all married, making babies,” she said in a news release. “I knew not having a stable relationship at home and starting a family was gradually gnawing away at me.” The 38-year-old has that now and her life is shifting once again, which will give her yet another perspective to write from in the future.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.