Some girls

Album: Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Trip the Light Fantastic, FASCINATION/POLYDOR

Andy Gill

Published: 18 May 2007

With her last single struggling to reach the Top 10, and the follow-up yet to make any impression on the Top 40, the game may be up for Sophie Ellis-Bextor. It's not hard to see why, either: while she's been away for a few years, a new generation of more talented singers has come along, bringing back soul (Joss Stone), character (Lily Allen) or both (Amy Winehouse) to a scene long corroded by bland disco icons like Posh Spice and Ellis-Bextor.

Even if you can hear past the dated and bought-by-the-yard techno-pop arrangements of tracks like the latest single "Me And My Imagination" (imagine a 20-year-old Yellow Magic Orchestra track overlaid with the "la-da-dee, la-dee-da" hook from Crystal Waters's "Gypsy Woman"), the shortcomings of her vocals become painfully apparent. She doesn't so much sing as apply the same tremulous tone to every phrase, shuttling up and down the melody with little discernible emotional colouration, a chilling harbinger of the singing robot on which teams of Japanese scientists are doubtless already working. And which will probably be modelled on her, too.

Soulless, lifeless and worthless.


© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

Album: Candie Payne

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, DELTASONIC

Andy Gill

Published: 18 May 2007

Candie Payne is a veteran of several lower-league Liverpool bands. Her debut album arrives via a hook-up with Simon Dine, the producer behind the trip-hop of Noonday Underground. On I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, he applies his sample-based arrangements to her Mari Wilson-style vocals, creating backdrops ranging from the Spector-esque wall of sound of "One More Chance", all deep, burring horns and dramatic drums, to the subdued "Jean Genie" stomp of "Hey Goodbye", and the soundtrack trumpet stylings of "Why Should I Settle For You?", which sounds like Portishead fronted by a pop singer rather than Beth Gibbons.

That's part of the problem here: there's nothing about Candie's voice that suggests that she's emotionally connected in any way to these songs; even the ones where she's supposed to be distraught, she seems to manage with ease. At the other extreme, the melody of a song like "In The Morning" gets lost amid the welter of samples.

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited