Lisa ‘Left-Eye’ Lopes serves an album that is several courses short of a full meal

With 20 million albums sold behind any outfit the human nature dictates an urge to discover what is the individual contribution (and solo-capitalising on the base-group’s popularity). Lisa ‘Left-Eye’ Lopes is the most unconventional and highly-strung member of the girl-trio TLC who has had a couple of very difficult years: accused of setting fire to her boyfriend’s house and being “Evil, selfish and heartless” for trying to leave the most successful girl group in the history of pop.

So, this album provides her with a different focus but her personal troubles have interfered with the creative process. It simply means that this is safe, predictable and low on ‘wookism’ release. It is a celebration of the achieved without any attempt to move the perimeters despite the album’s title suggesting some great enlightenment.

Such an illumination might have been achieved on the personal level but on a listener’s… It sounds like reprocessing the used, walking in the footsteps of the giants, inoffensively comfortable on the ear. The current hit-single ‘The Block Party’ gets its wacky atmosphere from the old hit ‘Mickey’, ‘Let Me Live’ is as pedestrian as a pensioner, ‘Jenny’ endeavours to depict one day in a life of every-woman and it falls short in conveying its message… (Each song is supposed to contain one.)

Still, the general feel of the album is that of a carnival with some subjects cutting deeper into the social fabric. (Not much, let’s iterate.) Thank God ‘Left Eye’ resisted inclusion of the diabolical collab with Fat, well – definitely ex-Sporty Spice (that topped the charts, nevertheless). There is some story about Numerology playing part in all this but, frankly, I couldn’t bother to work it out.

Lopes opens the album with ‘Life Is Like A Park’, pointing to life being like a playground, going in circles and up’n’down. She admits that you fall sometime and we only hope that such an injury is easily treatable.

If I scan theory-shrinks correctly then ‘Left-Eye’ refers to imaginative, creative… Ms Lopes appears to have been looking to the right (factual, conventional, bog-standard) while making this album.

6/10