With Breath That Is Bated

Music fans have been waiting for Dido to release a new record for quite some time, and now the wait is almost over: Her latest, Safe Trip Home, is scheduled to arrive in stores on Nov. 18.

In an early review published yesterday, The Observer noted that although the album is “overwhelmingly colored” by the singer’s father’s death in 2006, it isn’t gloomy.

“The outstanding song of the album,” the review said, “is the piercingly beautiful, Celtic-flavored ‘Grafton Street,’ a six-minute hymn to loss co-written with Brian Eno and featuring Mick Fleetwood on drums.

“Listen to it once and it will catch at your heart as a wrenching lament for a lover who will not return. Listen to it again knowing it’s an account of visiting her father during his last illness and death (‘My love, I know you're leaving, but I will stay here with you’) and [we] guarantee you will be bawling your eyes out uncontrollably long after the album has finished.”

You can listen to “Grafton Street” here.

Photo: Amazon.com.