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Old 10-27-2009, 06:26 PM   #9
Fabien Barthez
Spliff & A Brew
 
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Paloma Faith - Do You Want The Truth, Or Something Beautiful - 8/10.

As a few of you might have picked up over time, I listen to alsorts. Someone suggested to me that I might see the merit in this record, and they really weren't wrong.

It isn't even something that I would usually be into, but Paloma is so charismatic and compelling with her look and vocal, it is hard not to appreciate her on first impression. After that, you start to unfold her lyrics and music. She siings about relavance in her life and tends to be in a similar vein to someone like Lily Allen, but far more elequant and traditional in it's prose. Her vocal is like Etta James, steeped in the traditions of 50's female Jazz vocalists. And the music is just classic pop construction, with Jazz influenced melodies. I merely dream of being able to write pop songs as good as this.

My only critizism of the album is how it's produced. It can sound quite manufactured, particulally the drum sounds used. Which I can understand for the market it's aimed at, but they could have gotten a better, more live sounding sound from it. If you listen to her live, it blows the record out of the water in my opinion. I also think the mixing levels are pretty poor in places. The shame of it is that she is trying to be a truely credible pop musician, and to be let down by production is almost going to alienate the audience she wouldn't have if she was a more mainstream popista.

Stone Cold Sober is a great song, but this one is my favourite. The marketing and promotion must have been fucking woeful because this had a pretty poor showing in the charts, and for me it's as good as anything the pop world has ever produced. If I had finished writing this song on a guitar, and ran through it the final time, I would be 100% convinced I had just written a number 1.

But then, promoting a 'credible pop star' is a fine line when not trying to send a distorted message to the audience.

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