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Album Review
by SaschaS
27-7-2004
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More on: Swing Out Sister
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| Swing Out Sister: astutely evergreen |
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Swing Out Sister: 'Where Our Love Grows'
(Liberty)
Swing Out Sister: sonic beauty in an elegant manner
It may be summertime but the climate has become as dull as the culture… Pop music is generally a bitter pill to swallow [at any price], sex sells any crap, minimum dressing means maximum success… No style, no depth, no knowledge - I, Android… It’s not been this bad since Tom Robinson gave up on being ‘Glad To Be Gay’… [Who’s Tom Robinson? The only punky fauxomosexual but that it’s not important now.]
Swing Out Sister - it will be a shock to you to find out that for a band hardly known in this country - it is their ninth album. Yeah, nine in the series of classic releases that pursue the traditional songwriting at its best. Consider Burt Bacharach, John Berry and Ennio Morricone, then add touches and flavourings of Latino, Northern Soul and a bit of modernism that, for instance, Air and Zero 7 employ nowadays.
‘Where Our Love Grows’ is a follow up to the band’s EMI debut ‘Somewhere Deep In The Night’ and it is one to live up to. Hailed by critics [including this one - Link to our review listed left] and fans as the best of their career, it certainly was a peak for the principle two members - singer Corinne Drewery and instrumentalist Andy Connell.
It is a bright, elegant, lounge-music for people who like to feel the creativity touching their innermost selves, it is an album for people who have reached the pop’s perdition and retired from the whole kitschy biz in disgust. SOS are like a big-band with an ace vocalist - recalling Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick - that moves you to the brink of re-examining your love-life.
Opening with ‘Love Won’t Let You Down’, it combines chic beats with a vocal that is as smooth as silk sheets of infidelity; the title song follows in a more upbeat mode that invites you to swing [later on there is the acappella version that could be even better.] The succulent tones are further enhanced by some sexy brass on ‘When The Laughter Is Over’.
‘Certain Shades Of Light’ - sampling Herbie Mann and named after a line in ‘Breakfast At Tiffany's’ movie - uses a slight Latino feel to present us with a soundtrack to a fictitious 1960s flick, with ‘Caipirinha’ following the pattern even more notably via a Brazilian flare and then ‘We’ll Find A Place’ - an eloquent song that appears to embrace several decades of musical expressions at once. [The band had its first hit, ‘Breakout’, back in 1986.]
‘From My Window’ gets deeper into a land where feelings are dissected with such a seductive vocalizing to make me deliberate committing an adultery with my estate agent! Towards the end it gets jazzier, mellower and gentler with the opening track, subtitled (‘More Love)’, closing this album that is suave, chic and tailor-made for a seaside restaurant where good food, intoxicating cocktails and human of your lust simply blend into one irresistible and unforgettable tryst leading to a full-blown Sven-Goran.
Against the dearth, this is an album of evergreen pop that could be a touch too sophisticated for the average Brit-IQ, as it stands at 107. This is an SOS for all pop souls...
Now, whether ‘… Love Grows’ is on par with its predecessor is hard to say: we’ve had this one for about a month whilst ‘Somewhere Deep In The Night’ was stuck in a CD-changer for a couple of years… Until the damn player broke down, actually.
8/10
SaschaS
27-7-2004
Swing Out Sister’s album ‘Where Our Love Grows’ is released 26 July 2004 by Liberty/EMI
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