Starting Today

Music Well I didn't think I'd ever end up buying the number one album in the country in the first week of release. Not anymore, not even for charity. I thought Natalie Imbruglia's Counting Down The Days might puncture the top ten, but the first single debuted at about number six. Which goes some way to demonstrating the disparity between the album and single charts.

It isn't the revelatory experience which was White Lilies Island. That had the ability to catch you unawares and puncture your heart. This is much more to do with the nuts and bolts of putting together song which slowly gets under the skin, familiarity through repeated play being the key. The first single Shiver is no That Day and to a degree is slightly retrograde -- there is the odd guitar chord which sounds like Torn and a fairly standard radio fade out.

Other tracks are much more satisying, a bit of Beatles here, a bit of Carole King there. It has the intimacy of a gig at some club were you don't really know the singer but you love the songs. Despite the mass writing credits (some tracks were crafted by four hands) it very much sounds like the work of a woman in love. There aren't too many melancholy moments, just subdued like the girl's just waking up or going to bed. In many songs the lyrics are parred down to a minimum.

Overall it doesn't sound all that commercial. It's not Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine, but although most of the songs average out at about three and half minutes there aren't that many singles. You can't dance to them. Which is why it's funny the public would line up for it. The best time to listen to this is probably at midnight coming home from a trip out letting it wash over you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow. I certainly would never have put money on that album going to number 1.

I've listened to Left of the Middle a lot, White Lillies Island a little, and this one not at all. Perhaps I should revisit my Imbruglia records :-)