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poptimistsI've been meaning to write about this album for weeks and weeks. The fact that I haven't yet got bored of thinking about it is probably greater praise than anything I can write below. Also the fact that I want to write about all the individual songs and why they are brilliant or dull or sound like Fleetwood Mac ('Today The Sun's On Us') or an All Saints B-side ('If You Go') or what would happen if Vince Clarke ever resurrected Yazoo ('The Distance Between Us' - NB this is AWESOME) means I should probably keep an eye on my word count before I get carried away.
Trip The Light Fantastic kicks off in traditional style with the first two singles 'Catch You' and 'Me And My Imagination'. The former has definitely grown on me since its first release, and neither have really suffered from overplaying.
I said on a thread yesterday that Fergie's 'Big Girls Don't Cry' works better in the context of the album - this obviously doesn't apply here as the two singles are right at the start, but what the album does lend them is the fact that I can't SEE Sophie clomping around like a blind baby giraffe. It amazes me how much this puts me off her music. Ice-queen popstars are meant to be graceful and dismissive, not clumsy and gormless. Without the visual evidence it is far easier to suspend my belief that SEB is actually a witty, talented pop icon who has briefly stepped down from her robot diva moon palace in order to make some of these things you earthlings call 'songs'. This works the opposite way with say, Avril Lasagne - I need to picture her bratty face during 'Girlfriend' to get full value-for-money bitchy arrogance required to pull off the song.
Anyway, back to TTLF. Bang in the middle of the album we have two songs penned by Lovely Dan from Lovely The Feeling, hooray! Instantly recognisable from the wibbly-wobbly piano-handclap combination, 'Only One' has daft backing vocals and a perfect pop song structure. It's one of the highlights of the album and plays up SEB's rarely-seen relaxed, playful side, that appeared fleetingly in Murder On The Dancefloor. See Soph, you ARE allowed to have fun without feeling awkward! I would love to see a video for this song (always a good sign), Soph in a top hat and pigtails tap dancing on the top of Dan's over-sized gold sparkly piano, with the rest of the Feeling doing hand-jiving in the background. OR perhaps an Avengers style spy-romp with classic cars, big hair and terribly English good manners. Anything where Soph and Dan could give each other comedy wink-nudges whilst Soph's actual bloke (one who looks like Dec out of Ant and Dec but is actually from the Feeling) plays the VILLAIN that Soph has to entrap etc etc. I might write to Polydor and suggest that. No-one nick my idea! I thought of it first!
The other Feeling track, 'Love Is Here', isn't quite as mental but is still pleasant disco-lite (Dan in the studio: "This track needs more hi-hat! I gotta have more hi-hat!"). Put this through the Freemasons remix machine and you'd have a euphoric corker here. Then straight after that we have 'New Flame', yet more affable guitar-disco, something of a CSS album-track perhaps? Culminating this disco trio is 'China Heart', the best of the bunch. Some of you may have heard this played at Poptimism last week, a terrific Moroder-esque wibble-trance space anthem that Sophie REALLY REALLY REALLY should release next. Her vocal alternates between terrifying ("Hungry dogs will chase you!") and seductive ("I need someone like you, to love and warm me through"), and the production ensures her wobbles are a feature rather than a hindrance - unlike the earlier 'New York City Lights', wherein Soph seems to struggle to get the lyrics out in time & tune with the music. Still, she's less nasal/vapid than Rihanna, less gratingly boisterous than TashBed, far less compressed than Fergie. Things could be a lot worse.
The album should really end there on that terrific boshing high note. The last three tracks aren't bad, just unremarkable, which almost does count as 'bad' in these fickle times. When oh when will this insistence on lengthy albums in pop cease? It's hard enough to fill an album with all killer and no filler, but DUDES if you make the album shorter you'll have a much better chance! The last two are 'UK bonus tracks'. Have I missed something here? I can understand Beyoncé adding on a couple of extra singles to a UK release to boost sales of her old album, but I bought TTLF in what, the second week of release? And Soph is definitely based in Blighty (her "'ello Meary Poppeens!" Dick Van Dyke intonation not withstanding), so what gives?
Overall this is an enjoyable, up-beat collection of dance songs that, for the most part, emphasise Soph's talents (i.e. delivering ice maiden platitudes over awesome beats). She knows her limits and doesn't attempt enormous soul ballads like TashBed, instead preferring to be sampled like a cyborg-Bextor. That reminds me: 'If I Can't Dance' would make a BRILLIANT robot video with the dudes from Daft Punk in the background banging enormous cowbells with glowsticks whilst riding vacuum cleaners covered in tin foil...
Trip The Light Fantastic kicks off in traditional style with the first two singles 'Catch You' and 'Me And My Imagination'. The former has definitely grown on me since its first release, and neither have really suffered from overplaying.
I said on a thread yesterday that Fergie's 'Big Girls Don't Cry' works better in the context of the album - this obviously doesn't apply here as the two singles are right at the start, but what the album does lend them is the fact that I can't SEE Sophie clomping around like a blind baby giraffe. It amazes me how much this puts me off her music. Ice-queen popstars are meant to be graceful and dismissive, not clumsy and gormless. Without the visual evidence it is far easier to suspend my belief that SEB is actually a witty, talented pop icon who has briefly stepped down from her robot diva moon palace in order to make some of these things you earthlings call 'songs'. This works the opposite way with say, Avril Lasagne - I need to picture her bratty face during 'Girlfriend' to get full value-for-money bitchy arrogance required to pull off the song.Anyway, back to TTLF. Bang in the middle of the album we have two songs penned by Lovely Dan from Lovely The Feeling, hooray! Instantly recognisable from the wibbly-wobbly piano-handclap combination, 'Only One' has daft backing vocals and a perfect pop song structure. It's one of the highlights of the album and plays up SEB's rarely-seen relaxed, playful side, that appeared fleetingly in Murder On The Dancefloor. See Soph, you ARE allowed to have fun without feeling awkward! I would love to see a video for this song (always a good sign), Soph in a top hat and pigtails tap dancing on the top of Dan's over-sized gold sparkly piano, with the rest of the Feeling doing hand-jiving in the background. OR perhaps an Avengers style spy-romp with classic cars, big hair and terribly English good manners. Anything where Soph and Dan could give each other comedy wink-nudges whilst Soph's actual bloke (one who looks like Dec out of Ant and Dec but is actually from the Feeling) plays the VILLAIN that Soph has to entrap etc etc. I might write to Polydor and suggest that. No-one nick my idea! I thought of it first!
The other Feeling track, 'Love Is Here', isn't quite as mental but is still pleasant disco-lite (Dan in the studio: "This track needs more hi-hat! I gotta have more hi-hat!"). Put this through the Freemasons remix machine and you'd have a euphoric corker here. Then straight after that we have 'New Flame', yet more affable guitar-disco, something of a CSS album-track perhaps? Culminating this disco trio is 'China Heart', the best of the bunch. Some of you may have heard this played at Poptimism last week, a terrific Moroder-esque wibble-trance space anthem that Sophie REALLY REALLY REALLY should release next. Her vocal alternates between terrifying ("Hungry dogs will chase you!") and seductive ("I need someone like you, to love and warm me through"), and the production ensures her wobbles are a feature rather than a hindrance - unlike the earlier 'New York City Lights', wherein Soph seems to struggle to get the lyrics out in time & tune with the music. Still, she's less nasal/vapid than Rihanna, less gratingly boisterous than TashBed, far less compressed than Fergie. Things could be a lot worse.
The album should really end there on that terrific boshing high note. The last three tracks aren't bad, just unremarkable, which almost does count as 'bad' in these fickle times. When oh when will this insistence on lengthy albums in pop cease? It's hard enough to fill an album with all killer and no filler, but DUDES if you make the album shorter you'll have a much better chance! The last two are 'UK bonus tracks'. Have I missed something here? I can understand Beyoncé adding on a couple of extra singles to a UK release to boost sales of her old album, but I bought TTLF in what, the second week of release? And Soph is definitely based in Blighty (her "'ello Meary Poppeens!" Dick Van Dyke intonation not withstanding), so what gives?
Overall this is an enjoyable, up-beat collection of dance songs that, for the most part, emphasise Soph's talents (i.e. delivering ice maiden platitudes over awesome beats). She knows her limits and doesn't attempt enormous soul ballads like TashBed, instead preferring to be sampled like a cyborg-Bextor. That reminds me: 'If I Can't Dance' would make a BRILLIANT robot video with the dudes from Daft Punk in the background banging enormous cowbells with glowsticks whilst riding vacuum cleaners covered in tin foil...
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Date: 2007-07-03 01:55 pm (UTC)Tash: mad-loud-bellowing, self-obsessed, single-minded, love-focused, soulful/lounge balladry.
Soph: cool-calm-collected, polished, no-nonsense, abstract disco stomping.
Both: weird faces.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 02:48 am (UTC)In order!
BESTEST
1. If You Go (Duh!)
2. Love Is Here (Sophie doesn't need Gregg Alexander to do AMAZING AM RADIO POP HURRAH!)
3. Me & My Imagination (I defer to Swygart's excellent description, or would if I had the link handy)
4. What Have We Started?
5. The Distance Between Us
6. New York City Lights (tiny bit stilted but a real grower)
7. China Heart
8. Today The Sun's On Us (I said this was krub once but I was WRONG thank god)
9. Catch You (bloody strange single choice, if you ask me)
10. Only One
11. New Flame (this is really good still!)
12. If I Can't Dance
LESS BESTESTEST
Bonus tracks would be 13 and 14, obv.
Easily her best album to date, but as great as "If You Go" is, and it is stunning, it's still not really up there with "Murder On The Dancefloor" or "Move This Mountain" or "Mixed Up World" or "You Get Yours". That said, the worst song is still infinitely better than "I Won't Dance With You" (a real clunker off the second one) and "Everything Falls Into Place" (a Human League-gone-totally-wrong pastiche thing off the first alBUM).
no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-04 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-05 09:13 am (UTC)