Mutya Keisha Siobhan. Flatline. Review.

Music Here we go then:



Oh my goodness. So many good choices, so much good quality, integrity, a sense of the different voice and not just vocalists, singing to the same song sheet. Remember when Doctor Who's Rose was broadcast and amid the plastic Mickey and inability to work out of the Doctor had recently regenerated we could nevertheless make a list of all the elements which were right, all the correct decisions?

Well, here we are again. Siobhan's vocal up front as though to underscore that this is the original line-up back, back, back. Then giving both Mutya then Keisha their own individual bits that like Siobhan's demonstrate their individual vocal quality, so recognizable in a way that isn't always the case in girl groups.

Mores to the point to trust those vocals and to showcase the harmonies, which again, because of those individual sounds aren't anything like what you'd find elsewhere and in a way which became entirely lost as each of them pealed away from the Sugababes and especially in the later years when those harmonies, which were the hallmark of that group eventually gave way to an autotuned miasma.

Lyrically we're in Lewis Carroll territory with playing cards and kings and queens and big, obscure metaphores which again is good news, this was a hallmark of One Touch. In emphasising the vocals, the music doesn't slouch, with loads of interesting beat changes and the "oooohhhoooohooooohoooooohhhhhooo" thingy from Fred MacPherson of Spector as backing vocalist.

Dev Hynes, the writer and producer is to be applauded. A lot. Indeed, genre wise this is closer to Florence and her Machine, one of his other collaborators, but actually it doesn't really have a clear genre. It's not dance, though there are likely to be mixes. In tone its also in the area of Siobhan's solo albums. But it also isn't. It's like One Touch, but ...

So just as when Rose entered slow motion on the edge of the TARDIS we all, or at least those of us who care about these things, breathed a sight of relief, by the time this enters its finally phase with its twiddly-bits, and oh those twiddly-bits, there's a genuine sense of, we're back. The Sugababes, or whatever they're having to be called now, are back. Oh my goodness.