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Listen
up coffee table magazine lovers of the world:
With a wave of my fashion wand your new Saturday shopper crucial but safe
musical purchase is to be the Dido album.
Yes,
but is she fashionable, inoffensive and not likely to hurt our delicate CK One
fragranced earlobes sweetie?
Of
course she is: Dido is sooo for you. She’s got basic lovelorn/never loved you
anyway lyrics so you wont have to think. A backing of acceptable yet unintrusive
“urbane” trip hop beats so you’re musically eclectic. A radical though not
too dangerous association with that radical boy of rap Eminem so you are up with
the kids. Oh and quite a pure vocal range.
Dido has a beautiful voice but
that doesn’t disguise the fact this is merely MOR dressed down in sleek but
stylish production. It’s Texas with manufactured edge.
But as the song goes “it’s not so bad, not so bad”: Here With Me is
heartfelt with beautiful effect given to the ice cool vocals and the Stan
sampling Thank You turns out to less nasty than killing your girlfriend, more
‘you help me get through my mundane days’. All inoffensive, listenable fare.
But
the inoffensiveness only frustrates over an entire album. Even the title
surmises the blandness of the imagery; it’s all black and white, seen before
tales of love lost and girl power. Even the purest vocals in the world cant save
that.
Then
the marketing turns the knife in. Don’t Think Of Me is close in mentality to
Meredith Brook’s Bitch with its “so you’re with her and not with me”
‘aren’t you losing out’ scenario all tossed into a painful Americanised
concoction with references to your “Homecoming Queen”. That sinking feeling
deepens on the U.S. targeted My Love’s Gone. Ridiculously, it reads as an
audition for the Titanic soundtrack, Dido donning an Oirish lilt in lamenting
the loss of her love to the sea. Or something. Nonsense anyway. Americans would
love it. And they do. 3m sales. That should be health warning enough. That and
the fact it’s music for 30somethings dinner parties. Darhling, it’s so your
thing!
Review
by Colin
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Track
Listing |
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1. Here With Me
2. Hunter
3. Don't Think Of Me
4. My Lover's Gone
5. All You Want
6. Thank You
7. Honestly OK
8. Slide
9. Isobel
10. I'm No Angel
11. My Life
12. Take My Hand (bonus)
13. Here With Me (video)
14. Thankyou (video) |
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