Sharleen Spiteri - Melody
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Free Music Notes for Melody
Free Music Review: Better than all of Texas put together...
Hit: 5 Stars
As a longtime Texas fan I was excited and apprehensive about Sharleen Spiteri's solo debut. I have loved Texas since I discovered a song of theirs on the "Bend It Like Beckham" soundtrack. I went back thru their catalog and found that they had recorded an amazing number of catchy pop songs that really appealed to my appetite for beautifully crafted and well-produced music. Their greatest hits cd is one of my desert island discs--amazing for a band that I knew nothing about until 2002. So I was optimistic but cautious when I read that Spiteri was recording an album in the vein of Amy Winehouse and Duffy. What a revelation the resulting cd "Melody" is! Spiteri takes the Winehouse traditional soul genre and makes it her own--in spades. From the beginning track until the last one, I am more enthralled every time I listen to it. It is an amazing album by one of the richest voices in popular music. Listen--you won't be disappointed! Free Music Review: From Texas
Hit: 4 Stars
"Melody" is the solo debut by lead vocalist of UK group Texas. Produced by Bernard Butler (he also produced Duffy's debut smash), it finds her mining that same lush, melodramatic sixties blue-eyed soul sound similar to Dusty Springfield or Nancy Sinatra.
It's a real shame that Sharleen will inevitably be accused of jumping on the retro soul bandwagon (presently commandeered by the likes of Duffy, Amy Winehouse and Adele) as she had already (with her group) dipped her toes in this style a decade ago, but no one can accuse her of lacking soul.
"Melody" is an album born out of heartbreak (she recently broke up with her partner of 10 years with whom she has a kid), thus a good chunk of the songs are downbeat swirling string-swathed pieces with lyrics to match; songs like "All the times I cried", the almost Trip Hop James Bond-esque "Melody" ("there's still no cure for you" she sings), the Marvin Gaye-like "I wonder" (lovely soothing harmonies),and "You let me down". The beautiful retro "I'm gonna haunt you" could have been done by Nancy Sinatra.
Upping the tempo are the swinging "It was you", the horn sprinkled "Stop, I don't love you anymore" (sure to get her Duffy comparisons), the Motown-style pair of "Don't keep me waiting" and "Where did it go wrong", and the horn driven "Day tripping".
Standout has got to be the tender lullaby-like closing track "Fran?oise" with softly chiming guitars, piano, and a hushed delivery from Sharleen. Stunning!!
I must confess, this CD is very uncommercial sounding (I'm not surprised none of the singles has been a big hit) but it's still managed to peak at #3 in the UK and go gold. A very good album which I would highly reccommend to any music lover.
Free Music Review: Let's get real
Hit: 5 Stars
Ms Spiteri's album is one of the best albums from a female Pop singer in the last year. Only Joan As Policewoman's album "To Survive" comes close in the Western World, Carla Bruni's recent album is excellent, too.
So if you feel like stuffing all the current crop of female "wannabe" pop singers in a blender, then put all your Duffy, Gabriella Cilmi, Lilly Allen, Missy Higgins, Pink and Sarah Blasko albums in the nearest dumpster and get into something with a bit more class - Sharleen Spiteri's very fine album.
Free Music Review: Sultry vocals with lush, melodramatic pop music from the fifties and sixties.
Hit: 4 Stars
The brilliant Italian/Scottish songstress behind the widely known Glasgow rock band, Texas, emerges as a solo artist with her long awaited debut album "Melody".
Calling this her "Nancy Sinatra record", the Texas frontwoman unleashes a flurry of trumpets and parping saxophones. Her sultry, provocative voice sits well with Sixties soul.
Sharleen has clearly been dreaming about lush, melodramatic pop music from the fifties and sixties: Motown, Bacharach, The Shangri-Las, Serge Gainsbourg, Lee Hazelwood, Righteous Brothers.
It's hardly a revelation that Spiteri likes this sort of thing: she's been homaging Motown ("Black Eyed Boy"), channelling Marvin Gaye ("Say What You Want") and sampling Gainsbourg ("Guitar Song") with Texas for years.
Sharleen Spiteri has picked a very apt time to unleash her inner Dusty Springfield. Not since the actual 60s have the 60s been so very "now" - but with Amy Winehouse, Adele and Duffy clogging up the charts with their bouffants and smoky eye make-up, is there room for Sharleen? Sure !
"Melody" explores fresh musical terrain. Whereas Texas sold 20 million albums by looking to The Pretenders, Motown and modern R&B for inspiration, Sharleen's first solo effort relies more on Fifties doo-wop, female harmony groups, Nancy Sinatra, and Francoise Hardy and Serge Gainsbourg's dreamy French pop, although a few hints of Motown do remain.
She says she is proud to have written and produced the new album herself. "Being solo meant I could make the record I've always dreamed about", she says. "I'd done the Duffy thing, that big soul sound, with Texas".
"I wanted to go back further, so I decided to delve into music that had always been with me but wasn't suited to Texas".
Running her ideas past musical soulmate Johnny McElhone, the bassist in Texas, Sharleen began writing new songs during a break in the small Spanish hillside town of Gaucin.
With songs such as "You Let Me Down", "Where Did It Go Wrong" and new single "All The Times I've Cried", the album is an intensely personal affair.
In 2004, Sharleen split up with journalist Ashley Heath, her partner for ten years and father of her sixyearold daughter, Misty, and she admits that writing songs helped her to "make sense" of what was clearly a traumatic separation.
Her first album outside the Texas womb is a break-up album in the tradition of Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks".
The titles alone - "All the Times I Cried", "Stop I Don't love You Any More" - ought to give Spiteri's ex, Ashley Heath, pause for thought. The slow-burning, gorgeous "You let Me down" is pure venom but the pain is leavened by the Motownesque throb she utilised on Texas's "Black Eyed Boy".
But I do not see "Melody" as a downbeat, melancholy, dark album.
Sure, she spends large chunks of the album telling us he "isn't the one" and serving up surprisingly bitter one-liners. "Something inside just died," she sings at one point, "it was you".
But the songs are so polished, and Spiteri's vocals so sweet and controlled, that the bleakness of the lyrics isn't immediately obvious.
"Melody" is an authentic, affectionate take on the pop sounds of the fifties and sixties, an homage that's sympathetic to the very last finger-snap.
The singer's sultry melodies are a sure-fire hit.
Free Music Review: Texas' leading lady gets a 60s makeover.
Hit: 4 Stars
"Melody" is a short but sweet selection of tracks which bear all the hallmarks of some of the most successful music of recent years, with the added element of Sharleen's vocals. We're talking laid back, end-of-the-night tunes that could be easily at home either on the dancefloor or in the background of a late summer barbecue.
The playlist is admittedly brief at around 37 minutes, but that doesn't matter too much, as it's good enough to put on a loop. In fact, with every track a winner one way or the other, the shuffle function might not be a bad idea to keep things interesting.
Generally speaking, quality definitely wins out over quantity on the debut solo album from the beautiful and talented Glaswegian chanteuse.
She is in fine vocal form, with that distinctive burnt caramel carapace pulling at the heartstrings as effectively as ever.
"Melody" is easy on the ear with plenty of sheen.
The 60s-infused Bondesque soul-pop is holler-along-while-you-Hoover fun, but lacks a Winehouse darkness.
Following Amy, Duffy and Adele, here's Sharleen, ex of Texas, with the mandatory Bernard Butler-produced, brassy, Motown-style heartbroken ballads about how her man done her wrong.
Actually Motown's Berry Gordy would find much to approve of in Spiteri's accomplished use of brass and rippling percussion in "Don't Keep Me Waiting", soul-laced harmonies in "You Let Me Down" and the glorious finger-clicking excitement of the Supremes-like "Day Tripping".
As this was intensely personal stuff, it was not something she wished to address on a Texas album. Now, with the band on hiatus, she has been able to pour out all the hurt and betrayal she felt into a succession of 60s girl-group pastiche numbers, somehow managing to say the same thing slightly differently on each of the 11 tracks, all packaged up with an image suggesting she's been stealing Dusty Springfield's eyeliner.
All in all, "Melody" is pretty good - especially the stomping "It Was You" and the smokily atmospheric title track - but, even to those who have never listened to the Supremes, the Four Tops and 2008's other omnipresent influences, it will seem pungently familiar.
The Texas front woman has made her "personal fantasy record", which has plenty in common, at least superficially, with the defining record of the last few years, Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, and one of the biggest-selling album of the year to date, Duffy's Rockferry, allowing the ghosts of Johnny Cash, Nancy Sinatra, Serge Gainsbourg and Elvis to direct the sound.
The glow of nostalgia is achieved, but it's all a bit bloodless..
That's the thing about "Melody" - it's pretty rather than gritty. It's a bit conservative too, choosing to replicate the sounds of the period instead of trying anything novel or adventurous with them.
White on Blonde
The Hush
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